A celebration of birth

Today we are celebrating.

Not my birthday. I could give a rat's ass about that. You turn 44, big deal. There's nothing special about turning 44. Been there, done that.

But today is special day for Roundseventeen. Because it was on this day 9 years ago, when I was a young lad of 35 that I got an email from my friend Mark Montiero, who said...

"You should start a blog. It'd be a good way for you to vent. And it might even help you land some freelance work."

Mark, as if often the case, was right on both counts.

It's now 1800+ posts later and we're still going strong. In fact, we're closing in on a million page views sometime in the very near future. So, to the dismay of many, the blogging will continue until morale improves.

For one thing, and I know this is hard to believe, this blog has produced more assignments and job referrals than 6 years on Working Not Working and 10 years on Linkedin. Turns out that brutal honesty and a throw-caution-to-the-wind attitude makes for a winning recipe. In fact, this post may be just the thing that lands me the House of Flanges account.

More importantly, the blog has become an important source of therapy.

You see, I don't have much in the way of hobbies. I don't collect tiki mugs or glass eyeballs or paintings of clowns. I don't build ships inside glass bottles. I don't stockpile guns and make regular visits to the firing range.

Though it's hard to tell, my free time is spent working out: swimming, lifting weights, getting on the elliptical in my garage or hiking up the nearby Culver City stairs.

Similarly, I'm hopelessly monogamous.

Oh my wife has offered me the free pass to go off the range but she knows full well there would be no takers. Prodigious ear hair and untrimmed eyebrows reduce that prospect down to zero.

The thing is, I like to write.

Whether it's snarky Facebook comments, unfinished, under-developed screenplays, self published books that go nowhere, or even rambling blog posts directed at my 13 regular readers who have been with me for the last nine years. And for no reason that I can discern have decided to stay with me for the next nine years.

You, in essence have become my mistress.

Whether you like or not.

I'm thinking the latter.