I have spent the past sixteen or seventeen years collecting the group of friends I have now. I have people from all walks of life, as well as, more than a few of the way stations of my journey.
There are terribly few things held in common by all of these people. The first and most obvious one, of course, is that they are friends with me. The second - and this is probably why they are friends with me in the first place - is that they are each highly opinionated and tend to spend time and energy learning about those things that they feel strongly enough about to have an opinion on. (First person to give me shit about ending a sentence with a preposition gets a kick in the face. Just sayin'.) They are generally well educated - or at least well informed - and if I ask them for an opinion, they will usually be willing to share their thoughts on whatever topic is up for discussion.
With this in mind, I boldly returned to my blog (which you are reading now, in case you were confused or had forgotten where you were), and immediately set out to initiate a discussion that I thought had merit and that I hoped would spark plenty of comments and thought provoking anecdotes from these opinionated and occasionally brilliant friends of mine.
Sadly, I had forgotten to take into account the third thing held in common by most of my friends which is that most of them are also obstinate assholes.
To be clear, I wouldn't have them any other way and I do not mean that as a necessarily negative thing. Their obstinance has led to many wonderful conversations, devious arguments, and a host of wonderful memories that I wouldn't trade for anything.
However, it does mean that my recent post flopped in a fairly spectacular and genuinely disappointing way. By no means is this their fault. Truthfully, I probably shot myself in the foot when I asked the question of several friends a week or so earlier, when the idea had first occurred to me. Having already shared their opinions with me privately, they no doubt thought they had nothing more to add to the conversation.
No, the fault was mine and I will try to avoid similar pitfalls going forward. At some point I will revisit that post once I have a more involved audience in the hopes of succeeding in my original goal. Hell, I will probably just brush it up and re-post pretty much the same thing. Chances are, by then, I will have a different set of readers anyway. Actually, if all goes well I will have the same, but expanded, set of readers.
At this point, I am going to take a short break to share something that is painfully inappropriate and unrelated that just wants to rattle around in my brainpan a little bit.
Please note that I do not condone, practice, or in any other way approve of abusive behavior in relationships. Something about the very inappropriateness of this overreaction and situation tickles something I can't quite put my finger on.
Also, I would credit the picture to it's creator but I haven't got a fucking clue who it is so if it is someone you know, please thank them for me and give me their name so I can update this.
So here we are, at the end of what I had intended to say. I will sum up here simply by repeating that the strange and wonderful qualities shared by my friends are things I cherish deeply, and I want to thank each and every one of you assholes for supporting me in this endeavor. Talk at you soon!
