A long time ago, I had a personal blog. There was no reason or meaning or direction to the blog. It was just me talking about being confused by stuff that didn’t make sense. Like Republicans, or dumb jobs where you had to wear a piece of cloth that divided your upper body to make you look distinguished, or the war in Iraq, or my crazy dogs, or Baltimore. The blog was directionless, and that’s how I liked it. I was the Joe Jackson of blogging: doing what I wanted and the hell with it all.
Unfortunately, Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp is the best album ever written, and his fans have been chasing that high for over 30 years. We’ve been with him in his swing period, his classical period, and even his bongos period, but eventually, we’re moving on. We need stability. We need to follow a musician or a band and know more or less what’s coming next.
When I lived in England, I wanted to meet Joe Jackson. I wanted to grab his scrawny shoulders and shake them really hard, “What were you thinking? ‘The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy’? ‘Jumpin’ Jive’? I know you’re eclectic and all, but I want Loser-Punk! I want ‘Is She Really Going Out With Him?’ and ‘Happy Loving Couples.’ Hell, I’d love a new ‘Different For Girls,” if that’s what you’re in the mood for!”
See, I know people are complex. We have opinions about TV shows, and about politics, and about what is the best album ever, and is Angelina Jolie really that good looking, and about the sexual orientation of celebrities, and look–here’s a funny video of a puppy! But in the end, people stopped caring: You have a favorite album? Well, guess what–I have one too. And I don’t care about my own, so why should I care about yours?
At least that’s what I imagined them saying as the comments got more and more scarce.
Now I have what some people call a Daddy Blog. I needed to focus on one part of my life, and being a new dad, starting a dad-blog was the obvious choice.
Sometimes I miss the personal random blog, though. I went out to see a movie the other day, and a family took the entire row in front of me. The grandma was passing food to the grandkids on the other side of the theater. It was hysterical. Peeled peaches and paper water cups making their way back and forth throughout the movie. And all this happened in front of me while I didn’t have a personal blog to share this on! Oh, the injustice of it all…
But other than that, no regrets. Sure, I’m part of a niche, boxing myself in a way that inhibits my creativity, but this is simply the price I pay for more focus and hopefully more longevity. I love writing. I love the creativity involved in filling up an empty page. Ironically the only way to maintain that creativity was to limit it to a single subject…
Oren Miller is a father from the mean – sorry, NICE streets of Baltimore better known to his readers as Blogger Father, thanks to his excellent blog “A Blogger and a Father“, which I am a regular reader of. You can also follow him on Twitter.