Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Citrus Fruit Season Is Now Officially Over (Part 2 of Navel Gazing)

Last time I went all “GIANT POST WITH MUCH NAVEL GAZING,” I talked a bit about how I felt my humor and its unleashing on the world had to be tamed or mutated in some way. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with being funny, of course, but just that for me, I needed to get a handle on where it comes from.

Sadly, this post you are reading now might not make that much sense unless you read the other extravaganza. Shut up! I know! I desperately need an editor.

I’ve been thinking about this humor stuff for a while and here is the best I have come up with as to my motivations behind why I am the person I am. (The “how I got there” is only really interesting to me (and my therapist, I suppose, but only because I’m paying her and keep showing up at appointments, notwithstanding my wholehearted loathing about going)).

I wanted to be funny because that was the only way I knew how to get the love and acceptance I craved from people. It’s also quite handy in keeping all the feelings and issues I don’t want to address at bay. For me, humor is both a way to get people to like me, while at the same time keeping them at a distance. Trust me, it’s hard to be close to someone who doesn’t even accept the premise that “it’s time to be serious now.”

I shudder to make this a universal construct or anything, but I can only come up with three reasons why people are “funny” (in a “global” sense, where it pretty much consumes your personality, not just in the “have a good sense of humor” meaning of the word):


  1. To get people to like you

  2. To avoid confrontation and/or resist intimacy

  3. To be vengeful or exert power

In the realm of my personal neurotic solar system, only the first two really apply. I’m desperately afraid of letting the third come out and play (see reason #1). Though occasionally it does, but I’ve learned pretty well how to curb going into the neighborhood of #3. And when, in the event I do veer into that orbit, I always end up feeling pretty rotten afterward.

One thing I’ve gleaned from writing a blog for a while or posting on twitter (which is even worse in a way), is that blogging was and is a perfect medium for getting a decent amount of #1 and enough of #2 that I still felt comfortable. It feels a bit like “killing” during a stand up performance. I’ve done a teeny amount of stand up and the buzz from making people laugh is extraordinary. Comments, hitting the front page of favrd (it’s a twitter thing), traffic analysis through delving into apache log files, PageRank, landing on people’s blogrolls and complimentary emails are like crack hits to a psyche that craves acceptance, affection and admiration. People like me! They really like me! It feels amazing. How can I stop? Why on earth would I ever dream of stopping? How can I keep doing it? How can I get more? How can I turn everything in my life into a channel for the gaping maw of surface-bobbing love that is the scattershot of people who read this site or follow me on twitter?

To wit:

Wife: “Sometimes I feel like all our familial interactions are just fodder for your blog or twitter.” Me: “Don’t be ridiculous.” Me on August 18, 2008.

So what’s the big deal about that? Where is the harm in living your life on the surface and keeping everything light and airy and funny?

That’s the catch for me. After drifting my whole life on the superficial surface of intimacy, all forty-one years of it so far, my standard modus operandi has left me essentially empty inside. Not because the affection and attention isn’t real, deserved or appreciated, but because of the decades of strongly resisted intimacy that came along for the ride. Surfing on the veneer of life has left me seemingly vacant and in some ways unable to have “real” relationships with people. Yeah, I’m working on fixing that, I can assure you. Let me tell you, it’s quite the thing to “enjoy” the dawning realization and irony that you’ve lived your life in a such a way as to achieve the exact opposite of what you’ve been striving for all those years. Where is the “Cmd + Z/Undo” function for my life, please?

Though additionally I have to admit that the desire for positive feedback and notice (i.e., have my “stuff” read and be popular) and having that specific thing be so important; that ultimately also feels pretty needy and unattractive to me. “Here I am! Love me!” Plus, it’s never enough. I simply can not fill all my psychic holes with the affection of strangers I’ll likely never meet in person. That can only happen in the relationships in my immediate physical line of sight, I’m sure.

Anyway and again, I know this comes across as a classic case of a “First World Problem,” “take-it-to-LiveJournal, Emo Boy,” pity party-a-thon, but it’s hugely important to me (and my family by extension). I’m not going anywhere really; I’m not taking the site down with a huge emo flourish. My “voice” here on Ransom Note Typography isn’t changing, but I’m finding the “why” behind it is morphing a lot behind the scenes and hopefully the quality around here may improve (though I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you. *rim shot*). The net result will probably fewer posts each week, but I hope they will be better/funnier/less filled with inexplicable typos as my zeal to gain the contact high of immediate feedback abates. That’s now the goal, anyway.

Thanks for being a reader and letting me take a moment there and analyze and spill my guts about what the hell I’m doing.

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/28/08 at 03:35 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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