I would like to apologize up front for yet another meta-blog post about blogging and how that’s my true calling in life. I get it: you get it.
But, you see, what happened was…it was a clear and calm Wednesday night (as recounted on a Thursday)…
With my regular, self-imposed weekly Sunday deadline looming, I needed to pick out one of the several articles I have in the oven to touch up and get ready for primetime. That was my main goal yesterday. Well, of course other less important things got in the way.
Come 10 pm or so, I’m taking my routine, er, “pitstop”, and decide to check in with the gigs section on Craigslist. Now, I haven’t directly addressed Craigslist gigs yet, apart from listing it in the Dubious Endeavors page. I guess I haven’t fully explained my nuanced employment situation yet, either, so here’s the abbreviated context so we can proceed.
The short version is that I work multiple part time jobs, one real one with a real paycheck, and then several projects that fall under the header of My Own ----- Boss (yet another series of posts promised, but still not delivered as of this writing). Anyways, Craigslist gigs falls in the latter category, of course. Now, I haven’t actually fully ventured down any path I have found via this avenue, but I hope to some day.
Of course I would love to bring in some extra cash for the family’s sake, but another motivation for me is that I see it as not only as a fount of humorous entertainment, but also a potential source for unexpected and atypical misadventures. I mean, I need some material for posts covering ongoing and active shenanigans and keep all y’all entertained. I can’t just endlessly regale you with tales from my past…oh, wait, I totally could do that. But, being the kind soul that I am, I would like to have a variety of material for you to enjoy, Dear Readers.
Okay, now we can turn our attention to what I discovered last night:
YES, PLEASE. Now this is what I hope to find when I go sifting through the muck that Gigs often can be. YES YES YES. I could get paid to go on a treasure hunt, AND write about it. Oh, shit yes, I’m so there. I gotta say, this really speaks to my inner pirate. Speaking of which, I just so happen to be writing this on Speak Like A Pirate Day, which I celebrated with a tweet.1Spoiler Alert: You’re bound to roll your eyes in response. Or “roll your eye” if you’re a true pirate.
So, anyways, there I am, upon my throne, and I have come across this grand opportunity. I really should be working on my weekly post, but…oh, the temptation! Ultimately I gave in, and decided to tap out a reply to this post then and there.
Let’s just say that I got a little side-tracked in trying to convince him that I would be a pair of well-invested Andrew Jacksons. But ultimately, I ended up telling him I story I had wanted to share on here eventually, and at this point I already wrote it…why do a job twice, right? So I’ll let me, telling the story to some rando treasure hunt creator, tell you the tale of my first experience “blogging”. Please note that, unlike my usual M.O., a main of the point of the story was included in this post title. Sorry to disappoint.
Anyways, without further ado, enjoy!2[Voiceover, in a serious tone:] The following has been modified for broadcasting via blog; it has been resized to fit your screen (but not edited due to time constraints). And I quote…
From: bj@thepointofthestory.com
To: ——–@——.com
Subject: Chapel Hill
Hi —–,
It seems like I might be a good fit to test things out for you. I geocache3For the uninformed curious: basically treasure hunting with GPS. on occasion; once or twice was on UNC’s campus (I was a grad student there for 6 years).
As for attention to detail/proofreading, etc. it seems a little more difficult to convey my skills in those areas.
To give you an idea of my baseline, I once was an education major many moons ago, and had to take a class with about 300 other students, in which we would go to local high schools twice a week just to observe. We had to keep an online journal of our experiences. It was pretty much busy work. Mind-boggling boring type stuff, right?
I didn’t expect anyone to read these journals, and in fact thought that, at best, the professor would maybe read a handful throughout the semester, given the size of the class and what-not.
Despite this—or maybe because of this—I provided overly-detailed accounts of the asinine day-to-day happenings in the science classroom to which I was assigned, taking care to construct at least something of a narrative with each entry. Really, I was doing it to entertain myself, and keep me from wanting to shoot myself on account of the overwhelming stupidity of the whole situation.
Well, come the last day of the semester, and everyone in the class was forced to attend one last gathering. If I recall correctly, I don’t even think there was an exam. It was just our professor—who dressed like a mafia don, by the way, which was a bizarre wardrobe motif for middle of nowhere Kansas—is up there yammering on, waxing way too philosophical for any of us 21-year-olds to give a flying ----- I mean, he was really in the weeds about the true meaning of education. At least I think he was…I was kinda zoned out, too busy succumbing to my narcolepsy.
Towards the end, he was recognizing several students for outstanding achievements. Like, actual contribute-to-society stuff. I was about to doze off again, when he was like “and lastly, before we wrap this up, would Robert ———— come up to the front? Robert, are you here?”
Now, I’m starting to panic because, 1) he was using my real name instead of “B.J.”, and 2) last time I got unexpected attention from a collegiate authority, I about got expelled from the College of Engineering—personally by the Dean himself—for being a half-ass Engineering Mentor who didn’t make the protégés turn in their busy work. Anyways, I could not come up with any good motivation for what was happening…but of course you can, because I’ve spent so much time providing the necessary context.
To my surprise and delight, he presented me with a box of chocolate pecan turtles, in recognition of producing “Educational Journal Entries Actually Worth Reading”. I guess he actually read my journals, and in a hilarious twist of fate, mistook me for someone who gave a fuck.
It was definitely a huge ego boost.
Even better, afterwards, 10 or so other students, most of whom I didn’t know at all, came up to me and told me how they loved reading my work, and in a few cases, that it was their only source of hope and sanity that got them through the semester. One of them even had a favorite, “The Day the Sub Yelled”. Yes, I even gave them titles. And, yes, I’m chuckling right now as I recall that episode. That poor substitute teacher. He was clearly too old to be dealing with the students’ shit that fateful November day in 2001, and just like our beloved Rodney Dangerfield, couldn’t get no respect, no respect. I witnessed a grown man’s spirit broken that day. But I digress…
The point of the story is: blog like nobody’s reading. Bonus turtles and unexpected celebrity status? That’s just the icing on the cake of self-amusement.
Oh, and the other point of the story is: no task is too asinine that I can’t turn it into an adventure—on paper at least. Just be careful what you ask for, though. You might get more feedback than you bargained for—er, I mean, “for which you bargained”. After all, why the hell am I regaling you with an unnecessarily detailed and long (by tapping-it-out-on-a-smartphone-while-on-the-crapper standards) tale that borders on the edge of #HumbleBragging? Let’s be real, that’s way too much effort towards just having the chance of earning $40–It’s not even the real work!
I’ll leave you to ponder that philosophical quandary…in the meantime, just know that I probably would be free enough Friday or Monday to run through the hunt.
Thanks for listening!
BJ
Editor’s note: there actually was a P.S. to the email in which I engaged in some shameless self-promotion, imploring the recipient to check out www.thepointofthestory.com. Ironically, it turns out that the company who hosts this website had site-wide server issues most of that particular day, and if anyone tried visiting this site, they would be led to believe that nothing of the sort existed. So that probably explains why he never responded to me…
Okay, so while that guy is busy pondering what the hell I was getting at–other than “I always do way more work than I’m getting paid to do. Clearly I don’t value my own time, and/or I have a perfectionist’s personality defect; either way: take advantage of me!”–it might be helpful if we philosophize a bit more about blog like nobody’s reading.
But first! A side note that was too long to jam into Footnotes & References: It may be obvious to you that this is a derivative of “dance like nobody’s watching”, and I have to admit I see no real distinction between the two philosophies. Except that even I am not amused when I dance, whether or not anyone is around to mock me. Also, I’m going with the blogging version because it is a superior investment of time. Sorry, dancers. For your own sake you need to know that when society breaks down, you’ll be the first ones to be eaten. It’s best you heard it from a friend.
Either way, this is just most likely a repackaged “to thy own self be true.”4Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III; Shakespeare, W., 1603 Or at least the modern misinterpretation of it.5https://literarydevices.net/to-thine-own-self-be-true/ Not that you shouldn’t be considerate of others,6As exemplified in Privacy Policy, for example. but ultimately, you really should just have “an audience of one”–you!7Some people might call this a sacrilegious cultural [mis]appropriation, but I would counter that laying exclusive claim to the True Meaning of the Rainbow is scientific cultural appropriation.,8Footnotes & References BINGO! If you’ve been able to bring happiness into your own life, then you’ve done your part in making the world just a little bit more of happy place; call it a day. Don’t waste too much time trying to please everyone because, statistically speaking, you’re guaranteed to displease a decent chunk of the peoples. Never forget: you are not responsible for their happiness, and in fact, many people simply don’t want it–for you or for themselves.9I.e. Don’t let the Haters win. No better way to tell them to go ----- themselves is to be happy despite their best efforts.
Bet on yourself, kid; you’ll always be worth the risk.
BONUS! The Craigslist gig in this story probably would have resulted in mild shenanigans, at best. So I wanted to share with you a better example of a Craigslist gig that might be a bit more likely cause moderate to severe shenanigans.
Over the course of the last 2-3 months since I’ve started regular visiting the Gigs section, I have seen this same post regularly recurring about every 2-3 weeks:
After about the 3rd time I saw it, I started to feel really bad for this guy. Somebody, please get this man an erotic photographer! Or…get me a camera. At this point I feel like I might be unfairly judged just a wee bit if I were honest with you about how seriously I contemplated borrowing a friend’s camera and stepping up to the plate. Just know this: I was motivated out of nothing but pity for this poor guy. And I would have brought my wife along for safety’s sake. I have a feeling that the situation would have been a little less “erotic” than advertised, so believe me that wasn’t my motivation, lol. Anyway, somebody does really need to put the poor guy out of his misery (sorry big fella, it won’t be me this time).
And…you know what? Despite having seen this ad about 7-10 times at this point, just now am I realizing that the pictures would be of him. Oh, shenanigans, indeed.10On top of every thing else, this is the town where my in-laws live, and I bet with my luck…yeah. That would be real awkward. This realization is happening in real time, mind you. Oh boy…11https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxzYszntWuE
Well that turned out to be even more of a different and interesting example than I had expected. I think we may have just discovered meta-shenanigans…
Content created on: 18/19 September 2019 (Wednesday/Thursday)
Footnotes & References:
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