Sunday 27 October 2013

The amateur bloggers surrealist rulebook (Prologue, part 2/2)



  This is not a story. Enjoy the narrative.

  Depending on the intent of the author, blogs can be a strange thing.  The primary purpose of this blog will be to provide myself with a dumping ground/showcase for short and micro fiction, maybe some haiku or poetry if I feel the urge to write some.  I've been writing fiction on and off for around fifteen years, and it's high time I put myself out there a little.  Haiku and poetry are mediums in which I've often dabbled, but rarely committed myself to, and the idea of experimenting and posting some excites me.

  This is not a diary, but things do happen.

  So, fiction and poetry.  But there'll be a third element to this particular place, one I initially intended to avoid, one that is prevalent throughout the blogging universe.  I'm referring to the kind of self-referential rambling posts that tend to ooze narrow minded selfishness in which opinion is often presented as fact, and where the mundane has the stickers of excitement pasted all over it like so many flyers.  These posts tend to be labelled 'essays', or if the authors self esteem leaves something to be desired, they are sometimes jokingly labelled 'rants'.
  Now, I more than understand the compulsion to smear yourself and your thoughts all over your own personal little square of the net. I get it.  You're the one who understands, right?  No one gets it but you, and it's up to you to educate all the rest.  You're important, perhaps more so than the rest, and you'll prove as much by shoving your thoughts and broad theories down everybody's throats.  You'll make them understand just who you are.

  This is not a journey.  Enjoy the trip.

  I want to do that, too.  I wish I could.  But I lack both the broad universal knowledge required to do so, and the arrogance to believe I can.
  I do, however, possess something.  That's why I decided to write this blog, and it's why this blogs introduction has a secondary segment.
  The point I'm attempting to make is that the rambling essays' I've condemned here will play a part as far as the content of Abstract Footstep goes.  My intention however is to make them more focused in form, and didactic in nature.  Anyone who's ever heard me rant while on good form may testify to my ability to simultaneously inform and entertain - both myself and the sometimes spittle riddled recipient.

  The content of Abstract Footstep will be Art.  It will also be the art of communication.  I believe there to be great value in that.

  I'm not writing this for you. I'm writing this for me.  Gather round anyway.


Wednesday 23 October 2013

A Loop (Prologue, part 1/2)



  Fuck it all. I'll try it again.

  'Try it again' - the name I've touted all year to myself for this, my third and final attempt at a blog.  Since I've started, become frustrated with and finally abandoned two digital notepads prior to this, the name seemed apt.  I'd decided to try one last time.

  Apt indeed.

  'Try it again', in case you've not realised, is just about the worst name you could possibly bestow upon a blog, or indeed any project in which there is any creative element or potential for creative insight.
  What it has taken me more than six months to understand is that in deciding to name a new blog - a final attempt at a blog - this 'funny', self depreciating name, I'd already totally given up on the idea of writing and to keep writing a blog.  Or more significantly and accurately, I'd willingly but unknowingly decided that spending so much time and effort on such an endeavor was not worth it.
  In naming a new blog 'Try it Again', I would have been simultaneously announcing both my intent and my defeat.  It was a name with a backdoor built in. A name with an escape pod primed and ready.

I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try again.  It's obvious from the name I've tried before. It'll be no great surprise when the posts cease and the blog is eventually deleted.  The important part is to be seen trying by others - it doesn't really matter whether I succeed or not.

  It's difficult to properly articulate just how ashamed of myself I was, once I'd comprehended just how dedicated I'd become to avoiding the mountains of hard work that awaits me.

  Winning may not be everything, but losing is meaningless.  Those who lose without ever really trying have no currency.  Not with me, not with anyone else.

  I've spent a great deal of my short life slowly and carefully constructing my own set of standards.  This, I believe, is an integral element to existing as a true individual, one that is set apart as much as realistically possible from any and all religious or social institution, or any such dogma that may be passed down by said institution.  Such as they are, I'll not dare list these standards here, or likely anywhere else.  My point is, I'm falling short of even my own benchmark.  Money isn't something I particularly value, nor is a large company of friends, a career to brag about, or a pointlessly powerful, clean car.  I'd acquiesced before I'd even started; that I care about.

I've been wallowing in apathy.

Fuck that.

Fuck it all. I'll try it again.