Holy mother of God

Anyone following my Twitter will notice that yesterday I posted a message saying that I have a stomach bug. I eventually decided against posting a second message which ran: "I don't wanna die, I don't wanna die, I DON'T WANNA DIE!" I thought that might alarm some people.

As it transpires, I have stopped being violently ill now. However, as I threw up roughly a third of my body mass yesterday and actually lost weight (not much, but any amount is worrying), I will not be posting a review this week. Nor will I be posting any poetry, short fiction or essays. This blog will have to suffice.

So, what to talk about? Well, first I think I'll mention that I start university next week (apt timing for a stomach bug) and I'm quite terrified. Not of meeting new people, or losing old friends, or even finding my way around campus. Nope, I'm scared because of one thing and one thing only: MONEY!

Far be it from me to question the wisdom of capitalism in any way, but does it not seem slightly insane that the first time I'm expected to have to deal with any large some of money debt is unavoidable? Admittedly I could work for several years in order to pay my own way through university, but by that point I'll have wasted a large number of my life's years on something I don't want to do. Moreover, I'm a writer. What use am I to anyone?

A lot of my friends have begun personal blogs about their own lives, I figure that now is as good a time as any to re-evaluate my stance on this. I still hold the belief that any information about yourself or the people around you should be with-held from the world around. Granted it can be claimed that when I write fiction, or essays, I reveal a lot about my views and experiences to my readers, and to a certain extent I agree. When you read fiction written by anyone you learn a lot about certain aspects of them, like what they think of relegion or murder. Similarily, when you read an essay, it deals only with certain aspects of a person. When you read a blog post you find out every single mundane thought that crosses in their consciousness.

This obviously leads to insanely boring, and specific material. There is no way that anyone who doesn't know the author of the blog personally will understand what has been written (unless said blogger has been established for well over a year), or care. Sooner or later, everyone realises that deep down they're extremely boring. When this happens I've seen blogs go in one of two directions, the first gives a result similar to what you see here where the blogger attempts to produce some sort of content such as reviews, fiction, or poetry. This is fine.

The other direction that blogs tend to lean towards is vile. It consists of relating everything happening in their friends lives and moaning about it for nothing more than an ego boost. I've heard literally thousands of excuses for this form of internet penis waving (or vagina waving) but essentially it all comes back to one thing: "it gets all my feelings out". So does a fucking journal.

The one argument that I've heard in favour of personal blogging which has even been remotely credible put forward that a blog is not unlike an auto-biograhpy. I contemplated this idea for several hours before dismissing it using the following logic: An auto-biography is written retrospectively, therefore it can deal with emotions in a more mature manner. A blog is written when emotions are fresh, it cannot be dealt with by anything more than a gut reaction. Gut reactions are often wrong. I would also like to say that I don't really approve of auto-biographies.

Even if you can get past everything I've just said and still make that next blog post as full of venom as the last, consider this. What are you achieving? If you're posting your personal feelings on the internet the chances are that you have no-one to talk to in real life. You're obviously attempting to compensate for a lack of social fullfillment by doing the most narcissistic thing possible. Try growing up, and using whatever writing talent you may have gained properly.

I realise that this may all come across as slightly egotistical when we consider that I spent the entire first three paragraphs moaning about the mundanities of my life. Grant me this though, at least I had something interesting to talk about later on. If you don't agree then fuck it, I'm a hypocrite. What're you gonna do? Shoot me?