This Is This

A colleague came up to me the other day. I used to work with him a lot but we don’t see each other much these days.

Me: Hi Colleague, how are you?

Colleague: Hey, good. When are you going on holiday?

Me: I’m not. I mean, how do you know I’m going on holiday? Which one? Where am I going?

With each question I grew more defensive and he looked at me like I was slowly writing the word “TWAT” on my forehead as I spoke to him.

Colleague: You’re going to New York, aren’t you?

Me: Yes I am. I don’t remember telling you that. How do you know?

Colleague: Um, Other Colleague showed me your blog and you said you were going to New York.

Me: Oh.

The “oh” is loaded. It’s a loaded “oh” and I’m waving it around with the safety off, in a panic with a look of puzzled anxiety on my face.

Colleague: I just read a couple of posts. It’s a nice site. More of a site than a blog.

Me: It’s more of a site, yes. Thanks very much. I am going to New York, but not for ages.

He gets distracted and I walk away.

I come away from that thinking, “Fuck. I’m the blogging dork, and I’m rude.”

The words: “I don’t remember telling you that” echo around my head, like the great golden bozo that I must have seemed. In my dreaded memory, I add insolent arrogance to the sound of my voice, like it’s going through an effects pedal with the tone setting cranked up to “dickhead”.

He’s probably come away from that thinking, “So bloggers are rude and self-absorbed. And Cliff is odd.”

It was the first time someone at work who didn’t know I had a blog has come up and said something about my this site back to me and I went and got all weird about it.

I still find it strange, the whole blog/reality division.

Like when my dad calls me.

Dad: How have you been?

Me: Oh, fine. Just great yeah.

Dad (incredulous): Really?

Me: What’s up?

Dad: Well you had a cold.

Me: I did, yeah. I’m fine now. How did you know?

Dad: You wrote about it. You had time off work. It was on your blog. You said you suspected some kind of mucus cartel was at work.

Me: Oh. Yeah, I did, but I’m OK now.

I like that people are reading here, but it always feels like no one is, which is why it’s easy to open up and be so uncharacteristically forthcoming.

It’s harder that I’m a lot more open in writing that I am in person apart from to a very few people. I tend to be sincere with writing, which makes people think “Woah! What is your deal?” when actually there isn’t one. I’m quite an open person, but insecurity often makes me seem rude.

Don’t think that what gets written down here isn’t real just because I don’t pepper my speech with confessional pithy laconicisms. Who does that?

So colleague who asked about New York - I’m sorry. You’re very welcome and my eyes have adjusted to the flicker of a spark of recognition.

I always make sure there’s nothing in here I wouldn’t want everyone to know, so you’re not intruding by asking me anything you like in reference to something you have read here.

It’s very cool to think this website is a part of someone’s day, and that honesty is the shortest distance between two people.

On a separate note, I am listening to Sigur Ros which is beautiful but the lady keeps singing something that sounds like “Sam Torrence” and I have an image of the smirking moustachioed European Ryder Cup captain from 2002.

It’s like with the Portuguese samba jazz thing from earlier. I keep hearing random phonetic English words in it, sung with an Icelandic accent.

Olaf, his mum’s a man. Sam Torrence chowder like cherry custard.

Dear’s knocking bonkers. After me with frosty clues.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 8:38 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.