Yesterday I arrived early at a valley coffee shop for a breakfast meeting. As it turned out the person I was meeting had a last minute issue and was half an hour late. I found myself with time to kill but, I had my iPad with me and there was a good wifi signal. I have not been able to write a blog for most of this week so I thought this would be my chance. Unfortunately I had the opportunity but there was nothing I wanted to write about and I was drawing a blank.
I just starting typing in hopes that the muse would take over. I soon found out my muse was not in attendance at this early hour. Quickly my writing turned into a stream of consciousness ramble about my fears, anxieties, hidden hostilities and other sides of my personality no one should ever see.
After a couple of hostile paragraphs I realized this blog would never be published nor seen. It became a diatribe of venom and bile.
I am aware that there is a very dark side to my personality that I keep well hidden for the most part. When given freedom to become the "speaker of the psyche" this dark side gets even darker. It was good therapy to express these toxic ideas; they really needed to be cast out of my brain, and by writing them down I assumed I was transferring them to the trash. The waitress kept filling my cup with black coffee as I kept filling up my page with black rants. There was no one nor no thing spared from the wrath of my literary rage against the world. I was on such a fast ride to the depths of depression that the time flew by until my friend finally arrived.
He was extremely apologetic. Thankfully my depressing journalism was interrupted and we had a great meeting. I totally forgot about that rage against the world on my iPad until this morning.
I couldn't remember any of the things I wrote about except it was unprintable... and unsave-able. I would read it through one time and delete it.
But what app was I using at the coffee shop and where was that file? After a moment I realized that I was writing on my iPad Blogsy app. "Ha! I thought to myself, that was a pretty dumb thing to do.... write a very personal journal entry in a program designed to publish writings on the Internet? Silly me...! " With some sense of urgency I went to Blogsy to take that errant rant off the publishing runway, but it was not there. At first there was no need to panic. I was planning on deleting anyway.
I tried to remember what I did with the rant when my friend showed up. I know I was working on it when he arrived. Had I saved the file somewhere else? No... There really is no way to save a file like that to any other format. In Blogsy it is saved as a draft. Unless it is deleted it stays there until it is published. If your iPad is online, say at a coffee shop wifi, it is "live" to my blog. That is an advantage when writing something you want to publish quickly and easily, it is also very bad idea if you are writing things that should never be published quickly and easily. There was no draft in the app. And because of a free coffee shop wifi the app would have been "Live".
"Ha... " I thought to myself, "How funny would it be if that rant was published on my blog by mistake? Gez if that got out, there sure would be egg on my face."
With a tap of my iPad I realize my worse fears.... There it was, published on my blog. Several mean spirited, unforgiving, extremely judgmental, unfinished paragraphs, raw and uncensored for all to see.
Normally I publish a blog and then go online and proof read one more time before I feed the blog to my Facebook page. I had not done either for this piece of garbage.
I didn't even take the time to read it agian, I just took down the post immediately. It didn't get any comments or treats for the short time it was up, and it received less than a dozen hits overnight. I am not sure it those were just pings on keywords or people actually reading it. Either way...Lesson learned. I used to do all of my personal ranting in long hand, on paper, in disposable journals. That is still the best idea and this is the reason why.
If you read an incoherent, illiterate, judgemental essay on this blog yesterday.... I was hacked.... A demon took over the blog. I blame my muse who seems to have taken this week off. After hearing what I did in her absence she may stay gone for a while.
As you were,
Jay
I just figured you'd been drinking.
ReplyDeleteIt was great! I've got a copy if you want it. The piece in it's entirety will be published in a new book "Venting: Back Stage". JJJJ. Ax
ReplyDeleteDo you ever do your stand up with now your second Bob.Saw And met you at the Roseville California fair years ago.Always wondered what happened to you.
ReplyDelete