After re-reading some of my recent posts, I am sorry for, or at least a little embarrassed about, writing the same piece three or four times. I am referring, of course, to the recent CanLit debacle, starring Steven Galloway in the Randle P. McMurphy role. I had thought of deleting one or two, but each one emphasizes a certain aspect. . . so. . . ah. . . I was surprised to see it, anyway. Each time I wrote, it seemed like the first time. This may be a sign of advancing age and a brain that sometimes seems as arthritic as my ghastly old knuckles.
Once I've written and posted things, I try to forget about them. I know that is not the best attitude, but it is my personal antidote to the feverish "OMG-I'm-not-getting-enough-views/likes/hits/kisses/love" that seems to be a requirement of bloggitude and the internet-verse in general. Lately I have been trying assiduously NOT (t-t-t-t-t-tttt) to check my blog views, simply because a few weeks ago they shot up by several hundred per post for no reason I could ascertain. Certainly I wasn't writing any better. Most of the views were for the kind of silly video I like to post, both to lighten things up and because I really do think they're cool. But some were for actual pieces of writing that I did. I was not used to this and almost panicked. Wait a minute! Is somebody trying to read my stuff?
I've never had what could be called a "readership", though at one point I was as anxious as anyone else who writes and tries to publish. I'm of the opinion now that I should write whatever the hell suits, pleases and is personally therapeutic for ME and just put it out there. One person may read it, or none. My new YouTube enterprise is even more shocking: the only reason I get one view is that there is no "zero" setting, but was it ever any different? ("Those whose names were never called/When choosing sides for basketball" - Janis Ian, "At Seventeen").
At any rate, I don't want to write about CanLit any more, don't want to see people tearing into each other in public from the anonymous safety of their phone. Used to be, if you hated someone or were furious with them, you found a piece of paper, stuck it in your typewriter (or found a pen), spilled out your enraged thoughts in the letter, then folded it, addressed it, found a stamp (if you could find one - hell, I could never find a PEN!), then went outside (outside! THAT place), and started walking (!) to the mail box.
While it was true you couldn't take it back once it went thunk into the mailbox, that stroll might give you time to think better of it. Writers and people in general were usually advised to leave such a letter overnight, sleep on it.
Whoever the hell sleeps on ANYTHING any more? And we all weigh 300 pounds and are more neurotic about power and popularity than ever.
All is buggered. There is some mysterious problem in my computer that is causing intermittent panic: for some unknown reason, last week, things started to fuck up. I couldn't get on sites, when normally my computer functions at light speed. When I finally did get on them, things didn't work, particularly posting photos (which is what I live for!). Text would sort of post, sometimes. This wasn't just on the blog but on Facebook. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Other things have quirked and eluded me. Some posts have refused to save, or refused to show up at all. (This just happened here, by the way. Everything looked perfect, I had all the photos in place, then it froze and refused to save or post, so this is about the tenth time I've had to find some other way to do this.) I have tried EVERYTHING, and my son the computer genius spent two long sessions with it and tried every purgative, every exorcistic thing that existed in his repertoire (and he does this for a living and has never been stumped before). My husband screwed around with the router, though I don't even know what that IS, and for a brief, blissful while all the problems went away, before they all came back. I would put up with it and try to find workarounds, except - sometimes it just stops. Google Chrome won't even go ON this page and gives me a gigantic brown square, just the background, which is totally absurd. I'd rather have a white page! This is not good, as there is a subtle feeling of erosion, as if the (relatively-new) computer, recently switched to Windows 10, is about to pack it in for good.
The Windows 10, by the way, was a fix, not a cause. This happened spontaneously. Installing Firefox (which now works marginally better than Chrome, but only to get me ON the blog) didn't help. Is it the new photo program that came with Windows 10? Actually, it has been working well, and I like everything but the editing program which I can do in Windows Live. Or at least I've done it successfully up to now, though "up to now" doesn't mean much any more. Is my computer confused? Why? Why does it suddenly work "almost" normally, then go wildly catawampus again (and that IS the technical term)?
The blog is the only way I can express myself as a writer now, sad as that may seem. The only rule is that I do whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want. It's a combination of enjoyable sharing of quirky things, and (sometimes) ranty self-expression. It has no central theme, but similar subjects come up regularly, because these are the things I care about.
So far I can post text without any problem, but who knows what is next. I may have to write with a sharp stick and a little pile of dog poo. This video you see (at the bottom, if it's still there) - I've seen it before, it's fun - would not MOVE so I could write some text under it. It's like sorcerer has gotten his wonky fingers in here and flicked the workings of it this way and that. The WORST is when it all works beautifully again, because the next time I try to use it, one subtle thing will be buggered up - or un-subtle thing - then another, then another, until I am back to the dreaded shit-brown square.
This reminds me of those demonic medical symptoms you get, and believe me I've had them, where when you finally get in to see a doctor, the symptoms are completely gone. Then you go home, a month goes by when you feel a lot better and you're sure you're all right, and then you begin to feel just a little scribbly niggle of pain in the deepest pit of your abdomen. And within a month you're screwed, and on ANOTHER waiting list. Then, just as you walk into the doctor's office, the symptoms all go away.
I've been through that in the past few years, and I am not convinced I am in the clear yet. But this is a mere computer, is it not? Since the worst symptom right now (?) seems to be very erratic posting of photos, MAYBE there's something wrong with - but no, it couldn't be, because the problems started well in advance of installing Windows 10.
I realize this is boring, but I am anxious beyond what I can say. No one seems to understand why it's so significant to me. I failed pretty abysmally at everything else - I can't sell books worth two hoots, though I do think I write good ones. (It's not that, so please don't say something like, "Ohhhh, don't worry, Margaret, your writing REALLY isn't so bad!") Most of what I wrote never saw the light of day. Honest writers, all two of them, admit they have unpublished manuscripts lurking around in their files. I published something like three out of seven. I remember a time when publishing even ONE was a golden dream, something I thought I'd never attain. But I didn't know what it would be like, the loneliness and isolation, the disappointment, and the need to keep it to myself because failure just embarrasses everyone. I've gotten to the point that I just can't do it any more.
This has become a screed. My problems probably won't happen in this post, for the computer sticks its tongue out at me regularly, dangles a hope of wholeness and function. (Oops. After dangling hope by posting one or two images, it now has shut down again. Last time this happened, all my changes were lost and I was back to square one.) Nobody realizes why this bothers me so much, and I am totally convinced other people don't even have it. Or if they do, they laugh it off, it has nothing to do with their identity. IDENTITY? Isn't that just a given? Why do you need to work so hard to maintain it, to support it? What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?
Anyway, I don't know why this is even going up here at all except that I have HAD IT, had it with all the crap that is going on. I know a blog isn't a personal journal, but I also know it's not whatever I have been doing all day for four solid years, with literally thousands of posts. Only one gained a vast readership (I See Dead People: Victorian Post-Mortem Photography) from being on Pinterest: last time I checked, it was at 106,192 views, and the time before that, a few months ago, about 100,000. Considering my average is around 25, that's not too shabby.
I will make an attempt to post some images here. The sorcerer who has been screwing with my head may well allow them this time, who knows. Or not. Like life's problems - no, like MY problems, I am sure everyone else is consistent - it's intermittent and maddening.
Which is why this funny horse video is posted at the bottom.
(P. S. At the moment, I can't even save this, let alone post it. I had to go back and restore all my changes from memory. WHY is this happening? More to the point, how the hell do I get OUT of here??)
Well, first of all nobody buys your books anyway, even though you forced yourself to start a blog to promote the book. Which everyone told you you HAD to do.
It's all a popularity contest based on views and followers, meaning 98% of bloggers will beat you every time.
The only really enjoyable thing is writing the posts, which is considered the least important.
But no. THAT is not the thing that pisses me off today.
At the top of my Facebook page, a yellow bar appeared today that I cannot get rid of. This yellow bar has a little triangle with an exclamation point inside it, and it wants me to give my phone number to Facebook "to help secure your account AND MORE." The "and more" is never explained.
I do not want to give my phone number to Facebook. At all. EVER. No matter how many reassurances they give me that it will be kept private, it won't be. Things are being hacked all the time, daily, things which, incredibly, are even more important than Facebook.
This post is a sad little thing. I wrote a nice fat juicily angry one backed up with lots of articles from The Guardian, etc., saying that I was right and should NEVER give my phone number to Facebook, no matter how much Facebook tells us it's all right.
Facebook telling us it's all right is supposed to make it all right, or at least make us THINK it's all right.It isn't. All right.
Phone numbers and a lot of other personal information is for sale on the Internet, and Facebook, or, sorry, no, somebody PRETENDING to be Facebook, might be selling it even as we speak. This information is being tossed to advertisers like herrings to hungry sea lions.
That's still not the worst thing. This yellow bar won't go away and is still sitting at the top of my Facebook page and has no "no" option, though it appears to. It has a "dead" x that does nothing in the corner, giving you the illusion you have a choice and can turn it down if you want to. You can't. You can't even click it away so you don't have to look at the stupid mocking piss-yellow thing any more.
But it gets even worse. In trying to write a blog post about that yellow bar and the evil it represented, that selfsame yellow bar (incredibly) transferred itself to the top of my blog home page. It was greyed out so I couldn't get rid of it or do anything with it. At all. I know it was the Facebook yellow bar because it had the Facebook "head" symbol on the left side, but no lettering on it. Then Internet Explorer told me I didn't even have a blog any more, that it had been completely wiped. I clicked around and managed to accidentally delete the post I've been working on all day. It's gone. But the grey/yellow bar is gone, too.
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE?????
Like a virus, that unwanted "invitation" to give my phone number to Facebook jumped to my blog home page and destroyed a post about me NOT wanting to give them my phone number.
From the Deep Web (a sort of Twilight Zone of creepy cyberstories) to the Cloud, which may or may not actually be suspended in the sky, the internet just gets scarier. Soon it will develop consciousness, like HAL in the movie 2001, and spew astronauts out in space with no oxygen supply.
Meantime my magnificent post about Facebook's attempt to hijack and pirate my privacy has disappeared. Hey, I'M not saying Facebook had anything to do with this. But it's possible their little ghouls read my mind, or my blog, and decided to wipe the whole thing clean.
Or not. But FUCK how I hate having to reconstruct a post which I KNOW will never be as good as the original.
POST-BLOG GLOB: So here's what they told me! Facebook's "response" to my query about their request for my phone number:
Hi,
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback. We’re constantly
trying to improve Facebook, so it's important that we hear from the people who
use it. Unfortunately, we can’t respond to your emails individually, but we are
paying attention to them. We appreciate you taking the time to write to
us.
If you're having any problems with your account, please visit the
Help Center (http://www.facebook.com/help) where
you'll find information about Facebook as well as the answers to many of your
questions.
