There’s a thing I want to tell you before we go any further.
In recent months and years, more and more of the writing on this blog has, in its first draft, been dictated by me into my phone or into a portable voice memo recorder. On the plus side, this has allowed me to get a substantial volume of my thoughts down on something like paper for you. On the minus side, it’s introduced into my workflow a giant backlog of editing and image generation to be done.
This has happened at the same time as a couple of other trends, some of which concern the world, some of which concern me.
As I’ve written before, the readership of this blog has shrunk precipitously over the years. And the function of the blog has migrated — from being one of liberation and introduction (which is what it was at the outset: a venue for my escape from shame that simultaneously served as a way of meeting women) to a more confessional and documentary purpose. A repository of tales, there as much for me and for posterity as anything else.
It is valuable for me to engage in thinking in public, regardless of whether my thoughts are read. The discipline of exposing my thoughts and actions to air combats my natural tropism towards secrecy and shame. And so, regardless of whether anyone reads this, it’s helpful for me that anyone *could*.
So as the readership has dropped, as my libido has dropped, as my dating habits have become more sparse, and as my words have become exponentially more plentiful — I find myself contemplating editing a bit less. Giving you my thoughts in something more like the raw form in which they emerge from my mouth or my fingers, rather than sitting and making them all be perfectly honed.
Not that my words ever *were* perfectly honed or rigorously edited. But they were at least proofread. And not just proofread — reworked a bit.
I don’t think I have it in me to give you raw, un-proofread text, although that might be an interesting practice for me to strive for. But I do believe that I can, should, and will make it a habit of worrying over my words just a bit less in the coming days and weeks and months.
Which brings us to the title of this post. The Warning.
Usually you can count on my words to be grammatical, correctly spelled, and well-formed. I make errors here and there. There are typos, for sure. But at the end of the day, for the most part, it’s hard to say too much negative about the technical aspects of the words I post on this blog. That may become a bit less so in the coming days. Bear with me, and let me know if it bothers you too much. But I think it might be the price you and I pay to get a few more of my words out there.
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A short postscript.
I have an old friend who is something of a political pundit. He has a newsletter he sends out via Substack — once or twice or three times a week. I find it kind of painful to read because it’s filled with typos and imprecision. As a reader, I hate that. My reaction to his Substack lurks in the background as I contemplate moving in a direction similar to his.
But I think he and I are different, and I can both do what I’m proposing and retain my frustration with his doing something similar — in the following way: he genuinely is writing for an audience. Writing to be read, listened to, heard, and admired. Each of our respective narcissisms is different. I don’t actually depend on accolades to feed my self-esteem. He does. He wants to appear on CNN or MSNBC or wherever. And when he does, he gets a little jolt of excitement.
Back in the day, I liked it when Playboy linked to me, or Fleshbot, or Rolling Stone, or whomever. Nowadays, while I don’t imagine I wouldn’t get a thrill if someone connected to me or linked to me or reposted something I’ve written — it’s just not why I’m here, and I don’t ultimately give a shit.
I’m here for me, not for you. I mean that in the nicest possible way.
But in keeping with my commitment to being here for me, I am going to strive to proofread just a bit less.
Apologies in advance.
Header image prompt (openai): Large-format still-life photograph, tungsten light raking hard from camera-left across a portable handheld voice recorder — the cheap plastic kind, matte black, slightly scuffed — resting on a nightstand or low surface beside a half-drunk glass of something amber. The recorder’s red indicator light is on, recording nothing, in an otherwise unoccupied room. The amber liquid catches the tungsten and glows almost too warm, almost wrong, the color of embarrassment. Tight framing, the edges of the room cropped to darkness, nothing tidy, nothing staged.