audience of (no) 1

A friend of mine gave me some undue praise the other day.

"So many people must be reading your blog, now that you switched it over." She said.

I burst out laughing, though I didn't mean to and I think I startled her a little. I laughed because even the people that I finally solicited to read this thing don't, by their own admission. So all of those who didn't read it before and who aren't reading it now, are in the wonderful company of thousands....millions even.

Truth is, I don't write to attract droves of readers, though if and when I do attract any kind of audience, I'm sure my writing will get better, after a rash of scathing comments and unsolicited opinions pour in. But, I'm writing this for the same reason I've been writing my whole life; and that reason is, no reason at all. When I was a kid, I would go up to my room to hide out from the rest of my family and take my mom's portable typewriter with me. It was the kind of manual, old-school typewriter that you pecked at. The keys were hard to depress and you had to manually return it to start the next line. Sometimes the keys struck high or low and gave the piece on which I was working a little extra personality. There were no font or color options and I had to become familiar with correction tape, which I learned also wrote well on walls and other people's toys.

So there I sat, on my yellow bedspread, tucked away in my room, inventing stories about things like happy families and popular kids who had interaction with people outside of their gene pool. I have no idea what happened to most of those stories, but it was and remains to be, a fantastic form of escapism. I find I write all day in my head. I write stories about people who have incomes worthy of their efforts, bosses with legitimate managerial skills, people who know how to walk and binge drinkers who can hold their liquor. Most of the stories come in, are scrawled out on my brain and then hop back out into the ether, leaving me momentarily entertained and robbing my vast audience of my self-proclaimed brilliance.

Rare is the author who receives praise in bulk for her work though. Even Ayn Rand was said to have cried to herself every night because of the biting criticism she received for "Atlas Shrugged". She was known to have read aloud to her inner cirlce of friends and followers and then cry when they left. I would do that, the reading, that is, but I don't feel like being pelted with rotten fruit, in my own home. I'd rather defy the 'tough love' of those who maintain that their reason for not reading is fear of eviceration. A hearty belly laugh to that one, too. Join the rest of the masses in the empty seats over there. It's a packed house of barren tonight, so best get here early.