The Myth of Freshly Presyphus – A Big Thanks

It was 6:30 Saturday morning when I finally staggered home.  I had spent the night drinking with my new friend Dom in Hongdae; he had these weird cigarettes that were supposed to change from regular to menthol if you flicked the filter properly.  I kept trying to get them to change but I couldn’t.  I didn’t have the touch.  And since I couldn’t do it, that meant that the only way I could get a similar effect would be if I smoked two cigarettes at the same time, a regular and a menthol, and I alternated drags.

“How stupid,” I thought.  At least I’d gotten a girl’s number.  I figured it wouldn’t amount to anything, but it was good that I’d tried to talk to one (one = a girl).  Exhaustion was setting in.  “I’ll just check my blog stats and go to bed,” I thought.  I logged on the ol’ blog and saw I that I’d gotten a lot of hits.

“I’ll be damned,” I said to myself.  There on the WordPress front page was my post about the ear hoodie.  Beneath the picture of the dude with headphones around his neck was a little box that said, “Follow Fashion.”

Follow Fashion?  I got Freshly Pressed in the category of…fashion?  That made no sense.  I have no right to be commenting on fashion; I can’t even match socks.  I sat back on my bed and just laughed.

It was a great morning.

I had never even read a blog when I started this one.  As I said in a past post, I started my blog for the sole reason of trying to get a girl’s attention.  My plan failed, but I spent the time making it, and it was kind of fun, and my friends were really encouraging, so I figured I’d keep going.  About a month after my first post, a really dumb little story about how there was a lizard in my motel room in Thailand got Freshly Pressed.

“Oh, this is neat,” I told myself.  I was happy.  “This must be something WordPress does when someone starts a new blog.”  There were a bunch of comments, and I read through them.  A lot of them made me laugh.  I responded to maybe five or six, then wrote a blanket “Hey, thanks for the comments” statement.  “Hmm,” I thought, “I wonder how often WordPress does this?”

Well, not very often I would eventually learn.  I would also learn that’s it pretty bad blog etiquette to get comments and not respond to any of them.  A few people stuck with my blog and commented on some of the new posts.  Did I respond to those comments?  Nope.  Did I ever think to, get this, take the time to go on their blogs?  Not for a second.  Don’t get me wrong, I liked that they were reading my entries and making comments – it just didn’t occur to me that they had blogs and I should check them out.  A few months later, the comments stopped completely.  In the month of June, I got a whopping total of 475 hits.  For the month.  I still didn’t know anything about having a blog, but that didn’t seem too good.

I don’t know why, really, but eventually I really started getting into the whole blog thing.  Big time.  Like a brave soul, I ventured off my own blog and began reading others.  I started commenting on them.  Sometimes, the people would comment back.  I also wrote more.  A lot more.  I learned about blog etiquette.  I made changes to my page so it looked better and I made a blog roll.  And as I did this, a little bit of embarrassment crept in:

“Oh my God…” it finally dawned on me.  “I got like 200 comments on my lizard post and didn’t respond to ANY of them.  I didn’t go on anyone else’s blog…I was a complete self-absorbed bloghole!”

At times, I would feel bitter towards WordPress: “It was too soon!  I didn’t understand what to do!  I was like a baseball player who gets called up before he’s ready!  I wasn’t ready!”

I vowed that if I was ever Freshly Pressed again, I would respond to every single comment.  And not just with a “Thanks for stopping by : ).”  No, I would leave a good, thoughtful response.

I especially hoped that my responses would somehow revolve around fashion.

So anyways, my point is that I was really determined to respond to every comment on the “ear hoodie” blog.  I tried my best.  I spent hours replying to them.  My entire weekend went to replying to comments, and still there were a ton that I hadn’t replied to.  They just kept coming and coming.  I felt my anxiety rising.  It wasn’t going how I planned it would.  I went on a few people’s blogs but not everyone’s.  After awhile I conceded.  It wasn’t possible.

Really, it’s tremendous fun getting Freshly Pressed.  I felt like Sissyphus (who is a far more intelligent reference than Persephone), trying to roll the big rock up the hill over and over.  Every time I responded to a comment and went on someone’s blog, another comment popped up in its place.  Except Sissyphus was miserable, and I thought it was pretty groovy.

All that is to say – in my longwinded fashion – thanks to everyone who checked out my blog and decided to stick around.  If I haven’t gotten on your blog and read through, I entirely intend to, just haven’t had time (due in part to writing overlong blog entries like this one).  But I really am incredibly grateful – thanks a ton.  : )

• Sidenote #1: The breaks in this post were marked with former Lakers superstar Vlade Divac to spruce things up a bit.
• Sidenote #2: I never got anywhere with the girl who gave me her number.
• Sidenote #3: Over the past few days, I’ve gotten two followers whose names are so awesome I have to share them – Hooker B Washington and Chicks with Ticks.  Brilliant!