The Obstinacy of Blogging

The Obstinacy of Blogging

In 2007 I got nailed for having a blog which was mostly about movies.  I occasionally mentioned other personal issues, but never talked about life or work at Bear Stearns.  At a fateful moment and for reasons which were more than a little suspicious, the New York Times sent a 23-year-old Barnard graduate to write a story about my blog.  This was in the era of the CEO of Whole Foods writing bad stuff in his blog about his competitors, so bashing CEO’s about blogging was all the rage.

My blog calamity was actually pretty funny with the benefit of 12 years of hindsight.  Because I was not going to as many movies as usual and because my readership had come to rely on my commentary to inform their movie-going activities, I decided I needed to explain my low movie attendance.  What I wrote was intended to be humorous since the Gerard Butler movie The 300 had just come out.  I wrote:

“This pretty much sums up my last two weeks trying to defend Sparta against the Persians hordes of Wall Street. Nothing like a good dog fight 24X7 for a few weeks to remind you why you chose the life you chose. The good news is that after two embattled weeks both I and my loyal staff are still standing to fight another day. If you want details….pick up any WSJ for the past week and we were in the top three stories every day. It’s nice to know you can have an impact on the world….next time I’ll try to make it a slightly more positive impact.”

That reference was the excuse for Wikipedia suggesting that I was the highest priced person to ever be “deuced”, which is a term that has gone into and out of use in a blink and was intended to mean anyone who was fired for blogging beyond their paygrade.

Dealbreaker wrote a follow-up story titled Tonight Rich Marin Dines In Hell! Wow, that’s strong stuff and it’s hard not to cringe at it even now.  But the truth is, the article did almost nothing to me except elicit sympathy from friends that said it was a “where’s the beef?” article that was not worthy of the Times.  The ensuing stripping me of my stripes did little to my state of mind because I had long ago hardened myself to the possibilities of termination.  The following six months of scrutiny by the U.S. Attorney’s office was no fun at all and had more than a few 3am ceiling-staring moments.  Other than that, the blog episode faded into the annals of personal history.

People have occasionally asked me if I have an interest in blogging about movies anymore and I have declined.  It’s less about fear of recriminations and more about “been there, done that.”  But I am still every bit the storyteller I always was, so blogging was bound to reenter my life at some point.

I have written five books and countless articles and stories since those days, so writing has not stopped for me.  I have even negotiated the rights (or in this case the obligation to give up the rights) to write about the 630-foot observation wheel on New York Harbor that I worked on for six years.  I’m not sure if it’s cognitive dissonance at play, but I don’t particularly want to write about the New York Wheel anyway.  I think that stems less from the legality and more from having lived that experience just a wee bit too much to make it interesting to me.

Several months ago, my son asked me why I didn’t have a blog.  He felt that I needed a blog in my life.  The more I thought of it, the more I agreed with that view.  I needed a blog.  This time it would be a writer’s blog and it would become my medium for expression.  I had just written a story called The Lone Ranger Gets a Black Eye so I started my blog calling it The Old Lone Ranger.  That line from the Jim Croce Song about big bad Jim spoke to me.  I wanted to ride out there and tell the world what was on my mind, but I wanted to do it from behind some sort of mask.  A blog isn’t much of a mask, just like the Lone Ranger’s mask wasn’t much of a disguise, but it was good enough for me, so I launched forth.

I have been blogging away, sometimes writing as many as three or four stories in a day.  In the past month I have posted 64 stories, all but two are original stories.  That’s pretty prolific even by my weird standards.  I’m currently on an 11-day continuous posting streak.  I guess that means I love doing it.  I worry each and every day about whether I am writing enough.  That’s what writers are supposed to do, so I guess I really am a writer, or at least a true storyteller.

I write about several topics that I feel capture the range of my current writing interest: Memoirs, Humor/Fiction, Politics, Retirement, Business Advice and Love.  Based on my past experience I am pretty careful about my topics and my use of pseudonyms so that I minimize offense.  When I do get too close to reality I do so with full awareness that I don’t really care about the risk of offence.  I am always thinking about the stories and what they say and who they say it about.  I feel I do a pretty decent job at that filtering.

So naturally, today a colleague tells me that I need to be more careful.  This is the same colleague that has asked me in the past whether a particular blog has offended my family.  Hell, I’ve even written about the topic in The Perils of the Pen.  In thinking about it I have concluded two things.  First of all, there are some people who are either private or do not need to share their life with others.  They tend to wonder why I or anyone needs to do other than that.  The second conclusion is that I am not that type of person at all.  In fact, there is something in me that needs to get out and blogging is the best way to do that.  While I think I am careful and I am quick to defend my stories, I also acknowledge that I am capable of a misstep and am simply prepared to suffer that risk.

I love Harry Chapin as a songwriter.  Has a better song than The Cat’s in the Cradle ever been written?  His other song that I can’t get enough of is Taxi, where the singer/cab-driver says, “There’s a wild man, wizard, he’s hiding in me, illuminating my mind.”  Well that’s me all over.  There is a wild man wizard in me and the only way to survive him is to let him out through prose.  I am driven to write and thank God there are blogs that make it possible to write so easily.

To steal a sentiment from Norman Maclean, eventually, all things merge into one, and a story runs through it. The story was cut by the world’s great flood of experiences and runs over words from the basement of time. On some of those words are timeless raindrops of meaning. Under the words are the stories, and some of the stories are mine.