Note to self: if you write a silly and pointless blog, people may read that silly and pointless blog. Silly and pointless blog may subsequently come back to haunt you. The horror!

Oh well, when you’re a needy, nerdy show off with a recognition complex, you have to learn to roll with this kind of stuff.

Learned something new this week: so far, being an “editor” is a gazillion times easier and less time consuming than being a writer. It’s worth bigger social props too. A lot of industries are like that, I guess. The minions always do the most work. Look at the Sherpa. Some people just never get any credit.

Speaking of which, saw a major loud mouth Vancouver writer at the Little Granville Starbucks this morning. He’s one of those middle aged guys who writes snobby, grumpy, repetitive pieces aimed exclusively at men who want to seem smart (which directly influences what they read). Almost introduced myself for the purposes of greasy networking, but he was yelling into his cell phone the whole time, and I didn’t want the baristas to think we were friends. Sort of like not wanting to associate with Americans while in Europe.

Who’s snobby now?

Jen

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

P.S. 2018-05-23: I have no memory of who the aforementioned loudmouth was, but I can tell you that I recall what I was referring to in the first paragraph re: people reading the blog and it coming back to haunt me. I had been approached by a man trying to spearhead some kind of tech start up he was calling City Dazz [here’s the only link I can find that references it’s existence, or rather, near-existence]. He wanted writers (or rather, content creators, though I don’t think anyone was using that term yet in 2005). He asked me to come to a few meetings (“interviews”) with himself and others he’d supposedly recruited to work for him. And I just went. As if the whole thing wasn’t sketchy. Anyway, at the time of this post, we’d just had our first meeting, or rather, interview, and this entrepreneur, who I believe came from a banking background, seemed very interested in my blog, and over-analyzed and armchair psychologized about everything I’d posted thus far. It creeped me out, but my naïveté made me think I’d brought it on myself. It was strange to have a stranger weighing in, in person, when I’d assumed that the only people reading were family members, but his brief appearance in my life was a good learning experience. It was a good lesson in bullshit, for one thing. With no real capital, there was no reason to believe the project was ever going to get off the ground. I didn’t realize this at the time, because an older, clearly financially well-off man had told me his plans and I took him at his word. I thought I always had to be grateful, and deferential. I thought it was normal to be invited to a business meeting and asked to chip in on the cheque. The other funny bit is that he had me purchase and read two books in advance of our first meeting: Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and The Tipping Point. He really loved those books. Thought they’d really educate me. I believe the colloquial expression for the feeling I’m left with as I parse this memory is SMDH.

Now, I want to add that I really have no problem with this man. He was likely just a bit of a dreamer who got ahead of himself. The whole thing fizzled out for some unknown reason and after some months of periodic contact, I suddenly stopped hearing from him. And it was fine. I’d dropped $30 on books and a little more on various beverages, but no harm done. He was never rude to me, nor even dishonest. It’s just that the whole thing wasn’t a real thing. At least, not yet. And that’s something I would have recognized had I been a little more savvy at the time.

I wish I could remember what the actual start-up idea was. I have a vague sense that it was something to do with Google Maps, or something like Yelp, maybe. The first smart phone was still a couple of years away, but two generous possibilities are that poor old City Dazz either just missed the boat, or was maybe a little ahead of its time.