Just a Nice Surprise

Well shit, I wish I’d seen this coming back when I started the blog, might have named it something I could actually say without having to rehearse for 20 minutes in a bathroom, but I guess I’m stuck with it now.

I spend a lot of time with my cat. I have for years. In that time, I’ve learned that she has some really funny idiosyncrasies. She’ll come find me if I start calling her name from under a blanket. She’ll shove her face in slippers and fall asleep there. She’ll come sit on me but only if there is a blanket set up just for her. Though I don’t necessarily understand my strange little kitty, I’m glad she lets me pet her and give her top-notch ear scritches.

That’s what this blog is: me not understanding why exactly people come here and read my stuff while also being really happy that they do.

I know this blog with all its complaining and strange fixation on cats and name-brand printers may not be as important to anyone other than me, but seeing that this many people have come by and thought what was going on here was ok enough to merit a button click is a force of validation I haven’t felt since my 6th grade teacher told me I have good taste in books. It’s pretty great. 

This blog is coming up on its second birthday which means it’s almost old enough to form semi-coherent word sounds. I’ve written a lot about the bland shit that goes on in the life of a pretty bland student, then grad student, then teacher, but I also have kept a lot of things to myself. But, in the spirit of a ton 999 more people following me than I ever expected, here’s some stuff about me that I didn’t really intend to put on the internet.

1. I give names and personalities to all my office supplies: my pocket stapler is Stan, and he is insecure because he consistently can’t break through stacks of 10 pages or more.

2. Looking back, the posts I can’t stand are the ones that also end up not being liked by many people, and the ones I like a lot are also not that popular, so I have no idea what I’m doing right.

3. On a few occasions, I’ve gotten so far as to have another blog entirely made with a few posts up before I come back to this one because I can’t imagine abandoning it.

4. Vegetarians may shake their heads at me, but one of the biggest reasons I don’t eat meat anymore is because of a picture of some cows after getting their coat cleaned, and they just look so damn pleased with themselves, how could I eat them when they’re so happy to be soft.

5. Even though I’ve mentioned it a few times, I don’t think anyone realizes just how many of my posts are written while sitting either on the edge of the bathtub or, as with right now, in it while there is no water.

6. Yesterday a guy in a truck flipped me off while I was riding my bike to work, and I think I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time hoping the people he loves don’t love him back.

7. Only recently have I learned that it’s pretty normal for an apartment to have a garbage disposal; they are still mystical and terrifying beasts to me though.

8. Under no circumstances did I ever intend to tell anyone how much I love straight lemon juice, but I guess this is the time to mention that my last meal will be bread and a pitcher of unadulterated lemon discharge, and I will fade from life with a scrunched up smile on my face.

9. A lot of my bad habits I write about here seem worse once they’re in writing, so I’m letting you all know I’m actually doing pretty well and have only fantasized about burying myself in a mound of potato chips once this morning.

10. Lately, I’ve been drinking sparkling water almost constantly, and that in itself isn’t so bad, but I’ve also had to step out of my classroom at least once a day to release an uncontrollable lemon-scented burp that probably sounds like the catastrophic sudden shift of the tectonic plates beneath us.

11. Lots of my posts are also about some of the things I like to do beyond teaching and writing–eating, sleeping, complaining, thinking up convoluted stories that provide violent justice to the villains who make minor social annoyances of themselves–but did you know one of the other things I like to do is hide messages in my posts, generally by arranging the first letters of a couple sentences to say something that nobody will ever see because who reads a blog that closely.

Anyway, thank you all for reading my stuff, and I’ll see you around.

– Nes