between you and me

I wouldn’t say I had a reality check last night, but I did have a confirmation of thought.  I was out with Pam having a drink at 9 Restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen following a trip to the Bronx for the Yankees game.  Conversation came up about how things were going and Pam made the comment  “I was reading between the lines of your blog…….”

Over the course of this year I started posting much more regularly and the posts have been getting much more about me and much less about cocktails per se.  I rarely go back and read anything other than the last post I’ve made, as that’s the one that is still percolating in my head and depending on the haste in posting, may get some post publication editing.  When I do go back, it’s typically to find a drink recipe and I’ll be the first to admit that as a cocktail library my blog sucks.  I’m sure that most random googlers that are looking for drink information and find my blog quickly click back to the search engine.  There are lots of cocktail websites; mine is only useful for finding the recipe for just one unique drink.

So Pam’s comment brought to the fore the question I’ve been considering lately:  has my blog gotten too personal?  Right now I don’t even remember my motivations for starting this public journey and it’s the first time since I’ve started that I have really looked over my shoulder.  I enjoy the writing.  That on its own is a journey, I would not have made that statement too many years ago.  I’m hoping those college application essays written so many years ago were destroyed by Penn as part of some kind of freedom from humiliation act.   Making my writing public means I’ve got some skin in the game (heh), although that hasn’t improved my grammatical use of it’s and its.  I certainly would not put this much effort into my writing if it were just for myself.  I’ve joked that I have a few loyal readers and that’s definitely true.  I don’t try to publicize my content.  I’ll mention it to someone if I think it’s appropriate or there is interest.  I appreciate my friends that make the effort to follow my writing.

As I consider my question, I think about this.  If my blog is becoming so personal, should I just work on my personal relationships directly?  The stakes of having a passage be misinterpreted gets loftier as my writing gets more personal.  This happens in both directions.  The more of myself I have vested, the more judgmental I seem to be on comments.  Authors need thick skins.  Making it personal has had the opposite effect, yet has also raised my writing quality in my opinion.  It’s a double edged sword.

I understand the irony of this post (so perhaps that is the tip of my hand), but I spend an awful lot of time in my head thinking.  I try to find the sense in things that don’t to me, or try to make things fit my sense of reality.  Writing forces me to slow down my thoughts to actually capture them.  So to anyone that has made it this far into my post, thanks for listening to my internal monologue.

Fernet Branca

I didn’t have a specific drink to go with this post. There was an interesting cocktail list at 9 Restaurant that had house beverages based on the 7 deadly sins.  I started with gluttony and then rage.  Rage was a combination of tequila, mango, passion fruit, and sirachi.  I honestly think that 9 should change their cocktail inspiration to the 7 virtues, as rage was more like a poolside drink.

So I will choose a shot of Fernet Branca.  Its a bitter aromatic spirit that is supposed to be the perfect hair of the dog.  I’m not hung over today, rarely am I, but it does seem like this post deserves something bracing.

~ by Tom on August 14, 2011.