Skip to main content

Water sports and celebrity.

My friend Lucas is pretty cool shit, man. He and I go way back to when I still lived in NYC. God, we were such kids back then. Now he's a blogger, and goddamned good at it, man. I thought this recent post was particularly cute: "Back to the Basement: My Return to GBU".

I got so giddy and squee when I read, "To tell the truth, though, one of my favorite things about this party is the fact that it makes me feel like a mini-celebrity".

He and I are, as I said, old friends. We met on some gay profile site about a jillion years ago and proceeded to chat quite amiably on AIM. Often we commiserated over how sucky and dumb boys were or how we needed to get ourselves laid. I remember it: that old apartment I loved so much, the dark of the room, the bitterness, the relief at having someone to talk to. It was good times.

But we've (ostensibly) grown up since then. He's an up-and-coming sex blogger (giggity) and doing goddamn well for himself. He deserves it--I know how hard he works on behalf of his blog. Much harder than I do, I can tell you that, and I've been blogging for 8 1/2 years!

I can't deny envying him a bit. As usual, the envy is largely baseless and dumb, but it's sticky and hard to shake. I've been blogging since high school, and I don't think I've ever pulled in the numbers he has. But, as I said, I don't work for it like he does. I don't make it a point to blog as nearly daily as he does. I've probably put out more crudposts and angstings than he does. I also go on hiatus mysteriously from time to time--I certainly haven't blogged contiguously all 8 years I've been at this game! Whole months and seasons have elapsed without posts. None of that is good for the readership (although crudposts can be more easily forgiven if you post otherwise decently often enough).

But all senseless envy aside, I actually find him inspiring. I've been trying to blog more and more lately, with him in mind specifically. He can do, so I can at least try. I can at least approximate it--at least a junkpost here and there if it means not skipping a day; taking that moment to at least start a post on my phone when I get an idea for something. I leave comments on his blog (and others) to build a network, show support and encouragement, and, yes, hopefully attract some new readers.

And I think it's been working--my stats are climbing back to last Spring's all time high, and already averaging out about the same. If I keep at it as best I can, maybe I can get some of those feelings of 'mini-celebrity' Lucas described. Call me vain, but I would love to go to a party somewhere and someone come up and say how much he loves my blog. Until then, I'll just hafta keep at it.

I'm proud of Lucas. He's done so well, has an excellent blog, and I can't help being impressed. To think, only 4 years ago we sat around in our dark little rooms, IM'ing about the suckitude of boiz. I mean, we still kinda do sometimes, but at least we have something else going on in our lives to brag about!

Anyway, I love ya, Lucas, and wish you all the best :D Now send me your readers.

Comments

Other things that might interest you...

On phases and fixations.

My fixations are powerful, but they can also be maddeningly ephemeral and fleeting. And I hate that; about them and, honestly, about myself. But I’ve never really  asked why I feel that way... I'll commit immense amounts of time and energy and even money to a fixation for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two, sometimes rebranding my whole personality around it, then just...move on. I'm not sure when I first noticed this pattern—if it was always there or if it emerged and intensified over time—but it's been part of me for a long while. And every time I do, I feel such guilt and shame. Who even am I if I can't be consistent, dedicated, substantive? How disingenuous is it that nothing I care about lasts? I’ve always just accepted those feelings; I’ve never poked at them in earnest. If you can’t tell from the recent flurry of activity on this blog, I have been fixated on blogging; I mentioned in a recent post about this blog that I had a compulsion to revamp the whole bl...

Oatmeal is tasty.

{slurps up berry-oatmeal-deliciousness} Indeed. I need to work on rebuilding a morning schedule. I can be zombie-like enough that I'll waste a perfectly good morning, and have often slept through many. And, really, it's such a useful time of day.

My new favorite painting.

I, generally speaking, love art. I wish I understood it better; sometimes I can articulate its effects on me and what I think; at other times, that's tough for me. This is an attempt at understanding art, if only by trying to understand my experience of it.¹ The title of this post is a bit funny, tho: "New" is misleading—I first drafted it 6 years ago in Dec 2017, updated it in Aug 2018, and revised it a bit this week (Feb 2024). I'll write more about visual art and my ability to interact with it another time, but here's what I've got for now. So I finally went. There's a show right now at the Phillips Collection on Pierre-Auguste Renoir, my longtime favorite artist, and I went. I got to see more of his work at one time than I ever have before. And I found myself a new favorite painting among them—not just a favorite out of Renoir's work, but perhaps a favorite among all art I will ever see. The exhibit itself explores the story behind one of Renoir...