One of the podcasts I listen to is “WTF with Marc Maron.” He’s a
comedian who’s been around forever but never really had a significant
audience until his podcast came along, and now it’s gotten big enough
that he just recently was able to extend it into a television show. Most
of each episode is devoted to him interviewing different comedians,
actors, or musicians about their careers and lives, which almost always
makes for an interesting conversation. Each episode begins with a
monologue where he just goes off discussing whatever is going on in his
life, doing it in a self-deprecating way as he presents a side of
himself that is neurotic to put whatever issues he’s going through with
his neighbors, his career, his girlfriend, or his cats into a proper
perspective. Not many people can talk about themselves so fluently in a
way that’s accessible and interesting. Sometimes it almost comes across
like therapy, and a lot of listeners relate to what he says. Nearly
everyone has their own insecurities and moments of self-doubt after all,
and to hear someone so completely own his collection in such a public
manner is liberating.
One episode awhile back he read a
brief article about a mental disorder someone had sent him a link for:
Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder. His description of it in
a nutshell: Someone walks around with over-the-top egotistical and
arrogant behavior in an effort to hide the truth about how insecure and
self-hating they actually are. He went through the ten points of the
online test that accompanied it and decided he was probably suffering
from it. I listened to this episode while lying in bed falling asleep
one night, and it kind of jolted me awake when he got to the checklist
because I kept thinking, “Okay... yeah.... oh, that’s me... mmm,
probably....” and so on. He got to the end and said whatever percentage
of affirmative answers indicated the disorder and I thought, "Well, what
in the... I said yes to way more than that.”
Now, do I
think I have this disorder based on some online quiz? Of course not. I
think anyone who is even slightly reflective would look at any kind of
online test like that and find ways to identify with them. But it did
give me something to think about that still sticks in my head and
resurfaces every so often.
To cut to the chase and
apply it to this posting marathon I’m now about one-third of the way
through: I’m really finding it hard to write about myself every day and
believe people are finding so much of this personal sharing and
self-reflection to be very interesting. This keeps getting weirder as I
go through each day because it pushes me into addressing this strange
dichotomy I can’t quite resolve about keeping a blog. One one hand I’m
not someone who trusts people easily, and often I’ll hesitate to lower
my defenses enough to really let people in. It isn’t about being
anti-social or misanthropic, but more, I suspect, about
self-preservation: You don’t give someone the power to hurt you unless
they get close enough to matter. And I’ve always been more comfortable
with the idea of a small, tight group of close people around me and a
larger group of people with more distance. But on the other side of
that, here I am putting thoughts and feelings out where the whole
stinkin’ Internet could find them if it collectively tried hard enough.
And while it’s rare I’ll ever come close to posting something that gets
close to raw-nerve territory, I’m still putting it out there because at
my core I’m really an open book -- maybe it’s looking for what feels
like a more controlled way to reach out since I’m deciding what gets
written and what doesn’t. Once I open up enough to let someone in (or if
someone relentlessly pushes their way in or sneaks in around my
defenses when I’m not looking), I don’t hold back much.
But
all of this is roundabout, meandering way of getting back to the point
that it’s challenging to think of a new topic every day, especially one I
think will be interesting enough for anyone to take the time to read.
I’ve noticed patterns over the years about what kind of posts draw more
reactions and attention (the Summer Vacation archive goes back nearly
four years now) and I could try to engineer some topics that would try
and skew that direction to stir up the Likes and the comments. But that
wasn’t really my point in trying to do this. I want to find ways to
challenge myself. And this is where a different podcast entered the
picture.
My favorite podcast is “Stuff You Should
Know." I’ve mentioned it here before and on Facebook, and seriously, if
you find anything about anything interesting you should really give it a
try sometime. I was listening to one episode this morning -- a history
of how riot control developed into how it works now -- when the two
hosts, Josh and Chuck, spent five or ten minutes answering some random
questions that people had posted for them on the SYSK Facebook page. One
of my favorite things about the podcast is the chemistry between Josh
and Chuck, and the way they sometimes they temporarily drift off topic
into a whole tangential direction and just talk like two guys hanging
out. I enjoyed listening to it so much that I even borrowed one of the
questions from their discussion and used it as part of my greeting
message at school that morning: “Would you rather live in a world
without movies or without cheese?” It really inspired a heated and
multi-faceted debate in the five minutes we had before music class.
So
running the risk that I won’t get any suggestions, I’m putting the idea
out there of having anyone with a question they’d like me to answer to
somehow get it to me -- Facebook comment or message, text message,
e-mail, real life conversation, whatever -- and sometime next week I’ll
take a day to write up a post where I would answer any questions that
show up. I won’t promise I’ll answer anything, but it honestly would
take something really awful to get me to shy away; here’s your chance
test how open of a book I really am and exactly what I’d be willing to
answer. I do this same kind of thing with my class on the last day of
school, and even though the eleven-year-old kids of the world can come
up with surprisingly probing questions, there are usually only two or
three I’ll pass on.
Of course this all comes with the
condition that enough people even respond to make it interesting. I’ll
still answer what comes in if it’s only a question or two, but that
would make for a really, really short and phoned-in post. Plus this way I
have one less topic I have to think up for myself, and I openly admit
that’s probably the biggest reason I’m trying this. So let’s see if this
idea goes anywhere.
