Shyzer.com

I just uploaded a guest post to AdamJCohen.com, one of my buddy’s sites. Since I’ve been lazy around these parts lately, I figured I’d link to it and call it a day. Go read it, it’s not half bad if I say so myself. Possibly best of Shyzer worthy, if I wasn’t drugged up on wine at this point and thusly had the ability to edit it a bit semi-professionally.

I’d originally written a paragraph or two of it for a post here on Shyzer, but that never amounted to much. Go figure, huh? Still, I like it so much that I’m reproducing it here below since I question y’alls ability to click a link and read something on a secondary site. They say write to your audience and I’m pretty sure most of y’all are idiots!

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In hindsight, the pediatrician I saw as a kid wasn’t the kind of guy that instilled confidence or comfort in people, especially when it came to diagnosing them with medical concerns. He looked and acted like a lead character from Revenge of the Nerds. Sure, we all want a doctor who has a strong grasp on medical knowledge, but we also want somebody who looks old enough to shave and who could handle himself in a fisticuffs match with a ten year old girl. It was also blatantly obvious that somewhere along the way he’d clearly been told to work on his bedside manner. As a result, his attempts at small talk and calming banter were always over the top and uneasy. I’m not sure when I experienced my first awkward silence as a kid, but if I was a gambling man, I’d sure as hell pick his office as my best guess.

The story I got from him was always the same. He’d walk in, always fumbling with my chart as if it were made of butter, and break into a smile as he saw me. You could practically hear his brain talking and reassuring him that this would be an easy one. “Hell yes! He has a birthmark on his face! Phew, I can just mention that my brother has one and then get on with the examination!” How many times did I hear the story that his brother had a birthmark that covered half of his face? Beats me, but years later, I can’t remember his name or what his office looked like or even the sickest I might have been when I saw. But damn if I don’t still remember his brother had a birthmark that covered half of his face and it was the same color as mine and there were procedures to remove them if I wanted and did I mention it was the same color as mine and that it was on his brother, but not him because he wasn’t his brother and that ;lkjsdfk

Sorry, I slipped out of consciousness there from boredom.

I never notice my birthmark. Ever. I look in the mirror and either see nothing, since I’m not wearing my contacts, or I see a stunningly, amazing body that is ripped to perfection. Every few weeks I even notice that it’s time to shave! And anybody who has actually seen my body may now commence in shutting the hell up. But my birthmark? I literally don’t see it anymore. Which is why it took me a few paragraphs before I realized this article telling people how to live with a birthmark wasn’t satirical. Somebody actually took the time to write an article about living with a birthmark. Like it’s the same as living with autism or diabetes!

Hell, let me save you the trouble of reading the stupid thing. I can tell you how I live with a birthmark quite easily. I wake up, get dressed (I even wear pants if it’s a special occasion), go about my day, continue to be awesome no matter what, and then go to bed. How might I live if I didn’t have a birthmark? Um…I’d, um…yeah, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one.

It’s weird too, because every time my pediatrician would launch into his speed rant, I’d hold up a hand and cut him short. Thanks, but no thanks. I loved my birthmark and I didn’t need any brochures about removing it. Yet here on Shyzer, spanning over 700 plus posts, I’ve mentioned my birthmark a whopping one time and even then it was a simple throwaway line to a bigger story. I’ve struggled to come up with posts for more than five years and settled on things from my brother commenting on the bubbles I make while peeing to the eating habits of Australians, but somehow my birthmark fell through the cracks. Yet you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming if you tried to forcibly remove it. Huh, go figure.

I didn’t even think there were any stories in my past where my birthmark played a central role, yet as I thought about it today, one by one a memory would flicker back into focus. I remember a bully in preschool, in a weak attempt to make fun of and embarrass me, once asked if it was where a tiger tried to kill me. I kinda threw him for a loop when I answered, “yes. That’s the scar from when I almost died.” Ten minutes later, I finished telling a harrowing tale of where a baby tiger escaped from his pen and almost mauled me to death. After that, the kids always gave me first dibs at playing with the blocks. Hahaha, even as a kid I was a sarcastic dick. There’s the story of the chick who once asked me if she could kiss and make out with my birthmark. Yeah, that was pretty much the end of that date. I almost wish I’d stuck with her just to see what other stories I might have gained from her clinical craziness. I even have a running gag with some of my friends where every time they see me, they point to my face and say I have something on it and we go through a much longer than needed process that is only funny to us where I try to wipe it off. Good times.

I guess I can understand the aforementioned article though. It’s not even that bad of an article. I guess the aura of a birthmark comes from the fact that 99% of people don’t have one. I can dig and understand that. More than 50% of people have boobs and yet I’m still mesmerized by them, so how can I be one to judge somebody who has questions about a simple birthmark?

For me, it’s pretty damn simple. It’s mine and only mine. The odds of me coming across somebody with the same colored eyes or haircut or shirt are astronomically higher than coming across somebody with the same red splotch on the same part of their face and being the same size. It’s part of my trademark, something that nobody can take from me, but that which is one of the few things I can proudly wear on my sleeve - er, face - for all to see. Even if I don’t see it myself anymore. Maybe this article was worth stumbling across after all.

As I sat down to type this post, I realized it’s already after midnight. 2:15 to be exact. Well to hell with that! I haven’t gone to bed yet, so it’s still my birthday damnit and thanks to Wordpress, I can manipulate it to look at if this post went live at 11:59PM on February 7th

I can already tell this whole 30 days of posting is going to be a task of epic proportions for me. There’s only so much one wants to share with the entire world and most of what I’ve ever had to say has been archived here on Shyzer long ago. Case in point: before I write any post, I come up with three extremely quick and rough ideas of what I’m going to write about. I just jot down three simple sentences about three random topics and then pick the one I want to talk about most and run with it. But since Shyzer is already 5+ years old, it’s gotten to the point where I need to search through it to make sure I haven’t already talked about it before.

So tonight my three sentences were about how I love birthdays, how I’ve grown to harp and nag myself over my age (and how much I hate the fact that I harp and nag myself over it!), and how I really effing hate my hair.

Done, done, and done. Doh!

While none of those topics were sure to win a Pulitzer, that fact alone helps emphasize my point that I’ve run out of topics to write about. At least that’s what I’ve grown to believe. Yet here I am, creating a post out of nothing, mashing and juggling words to form some sort of cohesive, albeit weakly joined, narrative. But it’s working. Still. Even after five fucking years. That’s got to say something.

Going back and reading that second “done” post above was kind of enlightening in another way. That post wasn’t half bad. Decent writing, not too wordy, good story, even better message. And as I said during Shyzer’s fifth birthday, there’s a lot of crap I’ve written and forgotten about that’s not half bad. Why do I bring this up?

Thanks for the writers strike recently, many of the late night talk shows have been without their usual staff despite being forced to create new shows. As a result, you’ve got guys like Stewart and Colbert and O’Brien basically creating the jokes and the entire show on their own. (quick side note, if you haven’t watched the video where those three guys have a battle royal and pretend the beat the crap out of each other, you’re doing yourself a major disservice.) It can be painfully obvious that the shows are sans writers and none of their shows carry the same zip and level of quality as we’re used to, but at the same time it’s been almost encouraging. These guys are, in a much grander sense, doing what I’m doing here. They have an audience who expects to be entertained and dear God if they aren’t doing whatever the hell they can come up with. By mid-January they were all tapped out and openly stated so. Yet there they are, showing up on my TV on schedule, slugging it out and still giving it their all.

I admire the hell out of Ze Frank. Last year, he created brilliantly funny and witty videos day in and day out. Yet even he called it quits after only one short year and anybody who thinks that wasn’t a calculated move is fooling themselves. The cast of Seinfeld walked away from a 10th season not because they didn’t want to be paid another $10 million each, but because they knew they were out of good ideas. John Elway retired after winning two Super Bowls not because he hated playing football, but because there was nowhere to go but down. These people knew they only had so much, could only be tapped for so long, before they needed a break to replenish and refresh. That’s where the obscure nature of Shyzer comes into play. I can toil and write mundane and pointless crap all I want and it’s fine. I’m not on network TV nor do I have a following of 100,000 people. I can afford to suck and suck and suck as long as I squeeze out something decent every so often. Thus the challenge to create something for 30 measly days. I want to finally know what my suck to good ratio is.

Last year, Ze was 34. Seinfeld was well into his late 30s before he got started with the show. Colbert and Stewart and in their 40s and still able to create material on the fly. Before, I looked at them and though, “Dead God, how did they last that long? I’m not even 25 and I’m already tapped out of ideas!” But that’s not it at all. The more I do this, the more I realize how much crap they had to slog through before they found their voice and honed in on their river of talent.

And while I’ve got no idea when they started creating things, I can assure you it wasn’t much earlier than when I got started. So no, I’m not out of ideas, I’m still figuring out how to come up with and develop them. And at 25, I don’t think I’m so bad at it after all.

Now let’s see what I’m saying come March 6th

Like I said yesterday, schools up here in Virginia have been closed since Monday. When you factor in that they’ll also be closed this coming Monday for President’s Day, you realize that the Gooblings were recently handed a 7-day weekend. And so far, they’ve each spent 98% of their time off indoors either on the computer or in front of a TV.

I hate to sound like an old codger lamenting about the “good ‘ole days,” but it’s easy for me to see how childhood has changed in the last 10 to 15 years. I was part of the last group of kids who grew up without some form of technology pervading my every waking moment. And this is coming from a guy whose dad bought an NES before anybody else on the block - just as much for him as it was for me. The same went for just about every other technology breakthrough over the 90s. Personal computer, big screen TV, high speed (56k BABY!) internet, you name it, we most likely were the first in the neighborhood to get it.

And yet even still, the majority of my childhood memories are void of complex technology or machinery. In elementary school, I didn’t touch a computer until 4th grade, and that was to play Math Blasters in Horizons class. After school was spent watching an hour of cartoons on FOX (who else remembers when Nickelodeon didn’t have any Nick Toons and Cartoon Network didn’t exist!? Just me? Okay…) before walking down the street to Michael Mace’s house to hang out. I do remember playing my fair share of Battle Toads, Ninja Turtles, and Zelda at his place, but even more of my memories from that early on in life are of me on my bike, racing around the neighborhood with my dog, just looking for something to do. Well, that, and playing in the woods where I found a dog bone and was convinced it was an Indian burial ground. In fact, that was my greatest asset as a kid. My imagination. God, the hours spent playing outdoors or with my Ninja Turtles or Ghostbuster toy gun. I may have played alone a lot as a kid, but I never felt alone after I let my mind run wild for a little bit.

By the end of elementary school and throughout middle school, my main after school activity was calling Chong to see if he wanted to “Play.” For us, Playing consisted of walking around and trying to entertain ourselves. Sometimes we’d find a house being built to Play in. Other times we spent our Play time chopping down trees in the woods in order to make a bridge over a 10 inch creek. Or even more often, Playing meant wandering around in people’s yards, down the nearby streets, along the abandoned railroad tracks, simply looking for something interesting and using our imagination whenever we found it. Yeah, we were older, but using our mind as a source of entertainment was still our key toy.

Sure, we played SNES and Genesis whenever we felt like it, but I can’t seem to remember playing video games for more than a few hours at a time, if that. They just weren’t that entertaining! You can only play so much Madden ‘94 before you realize that it sucks. And I’m not trying to make it seem like I didn’t play video games as a kid. I played a lot. But only in relation to other kids back then! Before, I may have been a video game master, but compared to kids nowadays, I would be the kid who couldn’t figure out how reload his gun on Halo. In all honesty, I’d say only about 50% of my free time before hitting high school was spent either watching TV or playing video games.

I’d put the Goobling’s at about 90%, minimum.

So is that bad? Do I think their “generation” is failing at something? No, it’s simply a fact I’ve noticed. It simply make me wonder what their memories are going to be of when they get to be my age. I don’t see how they can be anything beyond video games, computers chats, and disappointing TV shows. I can’t help but feel like they’re missing out on something that I was fortunate enough to experience, something which is gone from kid’s lives forever.

I’m sure my grandparents said the same thing when TV entered my parent’s lives. And the same was probably said a generation earlier when radios began popping up into homes across the country. That doesn’t change the fact that they were right. Things did change and it’s the elder people who see it happening because they remember what it was like “before.” Are either generation better off or worse because of the change? I doubt it, but it’s still hard to watch it happen.

During a week long snow storm, God…I probably would have spent only enough time indoors to eat, sleep, and cure my extremities from frostbite. The Gooblings haven’t even desired to touch the snow. I can’t even think of a moment beyond dinner time when any of them haven’t been in front of a computer, TV, or video game. Literally. No forts have been built. No surprise snowball attacks have been made. No giant snowballs have been rolled into the size of a small car and placed in the middle of a road at the bottom of a hill for a pickup truck to slam into, which caused the driver to chase after us….

I wonder what my kids will say when my grandchildren’s generation welcomes the invention of internal brain computers or automated chore & homework completing robots or something along those lines. I bet they’ll lament over the days when their games were only played on TVs instead of in full life virtual reality rooms, which totally made them better and more hardcore. They’ll recall when Google searches were inaccurate at best and how information on the Internet only seemed to be organized or sorted until you actually wanted to find something and couldn’t no matter how hard you tried. Or even how they had to hide their porn stash in C:/My Documents/Important Files/Saved029/Computer Logs instead of downloading them directly into their brains, which…well I think my grandchildren will have the advantage there.

But my kid’s will be right. Just like I am. Just like everyone before me was.

We all have missed out on something previous generations had. But such is the nature of change.

Waking up with a hangover has got to be the most appropriate way to welcome the anniversary of ones birth. This past Wednesday morning was such a morning, as it took me a few minutes longer than it should have to remember that I was now 24. After showering and dressing in one of the free t-shirts given to us the previous night by our favorite Mexican restaurant while we consumed multiple Margaritas, I sat down to eat a healthy breakfast of birthday cookies and think about what 23 brought me.

I never used to worry about my age. It was all relative to me, seeing as how one day I’d hang out with kids three or four years older and the next I might stay inside all day long, playing with Legos and Micro Machines while watching cartoons. The thought of “getting old” wasn’t something that I feared nor anticipated - it was just something I accepted to expect, like the changing of the seasons or the Mariners sucking. People would always ask if I felt old on my birthday and I always thought it silly to answer yes, especially when the questioner was 40 years my senior. I was baffled as to how somebody could actually feel old when they were still in their teens or twenties.

And then my perception began to change for the worse. Somewhere along the way, I started caring about what others my age were doing and comparing myself to them. Well, not quite others my current age, but instead what those older than me had done when they were my age. It’s easy to look at somebody like Condi Rice, with her old-lady scowl that almost rivals Laura Bush for the “Scariest Face” award, and think of how you might like to be Secretary of State someday when you’re “older.” It’s easy to see that day far off in the distance, though, a brief sparkle on the horizon that you don’t give much thought too since it’s “so far away.” And then you read in TIME that she earned tenure at Stanford at age 26 and suddenly that sparkle turns into a mirage.

I remember the first time I read about Lincoln freeing the slaves. History is taught in such a black & white, cut & dry type way that most figures come off as not only perfect, but magical. As a child, your perception is simply that once there was slavery. Then Lincoln snapped his fingers and it was gone. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about his dream and then equal rights flowed forth. Washington woke up and was told he was our first President. Churchill said he’d never surrender and so Britain didn’t. We’re simply shown their end accomplishment and told how wonderful they are while rarely given a glimpse of the path they took to get there. We’re told that these are great men who did great things and that if we ever want to be mentioned in the same breath as them, then we too must do something great - eventually. For these accomplishments were done later in their lives, long after they had ceased to be little kids like you, so don’t worry. Now run along and enjoy recess.

Teachers leave out how at age 23, Lincoln was already serving in the Illinois Congress. Or that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was being led by a 26 year old Martin Luther King Jr. Or how the entire state and militia of Virginia was under the protection of a war hero named George Washington, at the ripe old age of 23.

I don’t know about you guys, but the biggest battle I’ve won to date has been getting Colton to put his socks in the dirty laundry every day. It was this realization that startled me into actually feeling old. How was I ever to accomplish anything as great as Lincoln or Dr. King later in life if I couldn’t even keep up with them in my early twenties?

I never expected anything in life to be handed to me for free. In fact, I hate handouts of any kind. I’ve always felt that if I can’t earn something, I don’t deserve it.

But I always expected to be given the opportunity for everything, which is an even worse illusion to have on life.

Nothing will be given to you for free, not even opportunities. I may never free an entire race from brutal oppression or boldly lead my nation through the jaws of defeat, but I certainly will never do those things if I just sit around and wait for the opportunity to come calling. As long as I never forgot that, never accepted what I had as being the best it could be, then I could keep myself from sliding into that group of people who seem to accept and embrace mediocrity. And it was with that epiphany that I finally started to feel young again.

I’m twenty fucking four years old. Do you not know how many opportunities lie before me, just waiting for me to seek them out and grasp onto for dear life? Lincoln had a law degree and a life expectancy of 35 years. I’ve got the Internet, modern medicine, and the ability to travel from New York to central Kazakhstan in 24 hours if I so please. The only thing we have in common is pure, blind luck.

So how could I possibly feel old?

I want to make sure some of my friends know one important fact:

Just because you’re 23 and out of college, that doesn’t mean you have to propose to your girlfriend. You know, you can try living together while dating first or maybe waiting for a year or two if you want. There’s no law requiring you get married once you’ve been handed a degree or gotten an entry level job at the nearby Kramerica Industries factory. Just because you’re old drinking buddy decided to propose to his lady doesn’t mean you have to as well. It’s not a race, folks.

I understand we grew up in the South where tradition is king, but Christ. I couldn’t see myself getting married right now any more than I could see a small monkey crawling out of my ass tomorrow. In fact, I’d have an easier time picturing the latter. If I ask another one of my friends why they’re getting married and their response is, “Uh…isn’t that like what we’re supposed to do now?”, I may just go postal.

When are people going to stop doing things simply because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do?

I’ve never been one for New Year’s Resolutions. The thought of making a weak ass “promise” to myself every year only to fail a week later isn’t as appealing to me as it may be to others. But for the life of me, I can’t shake the feeling that 2007 is gonna be different for me somehow. Not so much “better” than this past years, but “different” in a sense I can’t quite explain. But I’ll delve into that whole can of worms sometime later. I will, however, say I feel rejuvenated after spending the past year in Virginia with my family. I’m ready to challenge myself - physically, mentally, creatively, and, uh, Shyzerly?

Thus, the new norm here at Shyzer is going to shift slightly. First, comments will be turned on much more often than not, as has been the case over the past two weeks. But more importantly, you’ll be able to comment on something new every day. That’s right, I’m going to see how long I can last posting something new here at least once a day. If that can’t pump some life back into this site, as well as challenge me somewhat creatively, I don’t know what can. If anything, this’ll be the perfect way to teach myself how to write succinctly.

I figured I’d wait until at least a week into the new year before announcing this, though - for reasons I’m sure you can quickly grasp. Oh, and for the record, this counts as today’s post. 8 down, 357 to go.

As you all know by now, Steve Irwin died yesterday off the coast of Australia while diving with stingrays. I think I first heard it on NPR and by the time I got to my computer, it was all over the web. CNN.com had it as their lead story for at least half the day, as fif MSNBC and Fox. Even ESPN.com (?!) had it on their main page and many of the local / national news stations didn’t just save the news for the backend of their broadcasts like they do with other celebrity deaths, but instead ran it earlier in the broadcast.

And while it’s sad news, I’m surprised it’s such big news.

I always thought people saw him more as a gimmick than anything else. A source of mild entertainment as they watched from the comfort of their home as he wrestled a croc or stabbed at a snake. As we saw him more on TV, we got used to seeing him around, but there really wasn’t anything beyond that. He simply was that crazy guy from Australia that we all liked listening to partially because of his cool accent and partially because he did things nobody else would do. His TV shows here in the states did moderately well in terms of ratings and his movie didn’t really set any records in terms of earnings. What I’m trying to say here is that while a celebrity, he was a D-list celebrity at best and somebody who you didn’t notice when you went a few months without seeing him on TV.

And yet I can remember when other, arguably “bigger” celebrities died recently and their deaths didn’t get near as much attention as Irwin’s has. I’m not saying it’s not sad he died, but I’m just left wondering how much of these condolences are real and how much are from the “ex-high school” crowd.

I guess I should explain the “ex-high school” crowd. One of my major pet peeves is when people display false emotion. I don’t care what emotion it is, I don’t care what the setting is, if the emotions you’re displaying aren’t real and are simply what you think they should be, then you’ve joined the crowd. In fact, there’s no group worse at this false emotion than all the people you used to go to high school with, which is where the name comes from. You know exactly who I’m talking about - say you’re in a bar and you spot somebody across the room who you went to high school with. As soon as they see you, they come running up and pretend y’all were best friends. They as how you’ve been and want to hear your whole life story just as long as you can fit it into 10 seconds. Then they cut you off, brag about their latest job or kid, and then make some over the top gesture about how you two need to get together and “catch” up sometime.

No, we don’t. We didn’t talk in high school. We don’t talk now. There’s a reason I didn’t hang out with you before and I bet it has something to do with your crappy personality that you so eloquently just put on display for everyone within earshot. Don’t patronize me with this false sense of past brotherhood, as if we were close only to have drifted apart over the years. That’s not how it was, trust me, I’m a history major. Sure, come on over and chat if you want, but don’t insult my memory or my intelligence.

Some people do this far too often in their lives and it only gets worse when they talk to you about somebody who isn’t around or who might even be dead. They conjure these memories out of thin air, lamenting over what they lost and how wonderful that person was. They pretend the person was a saint and that they could do nothing wrong and I just don’t understand how or why people do it. Speaking nothing but good and completely false things about a person after they’ve died helps not their memory or legacy, but instead tarnishes and insults it. Speak the truth, no matter how little the good was.

When I die, I want people to remember and speak of me as for who I really was; warts, faults, and everything else. Don’t make me out to be my generation’s Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. I simply want to be remembered and credited with whatever I managed to accomplish, no matter how little or great. And I think other people deserve just the same treatment.

And thus, I hope that the “ex-high school” crowd didn’t highjack the Steve Irwin memorial today. That said, however, if all the condolences that people expressed were completely real and heartfelt, then so be it. You earned them, mate.

There are times I consider shutting down Shyzer if for no other reason than it’s no longer unique. I’ve talked about this before, but back when I started Shyzer, there were only a handful of sites like it out there. In fact, there were only around 100,000 total and in Internet terms, that’s minuscule, microscopic.

But the problem with blogs is that they evolved and spread. In April 2005, reports came out that 40,000 new blogs were popping up a day. Reports this month have that number in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Eighty Thousand New Blogs.

A Day.

When The Real World first aired, it was an instant success. Same goes for Survivor. The reason for this is simple: people were intrigued by the front row voyeuristic view they were given, found it refreshing in a sort of queer way, and wanted more. And more they got. Now you can turn on the television and find a hundred knockoffs that are so lacking in quality, it’s not even remotely funny. Well blogs are no different. The blogs that were hugely popular when I first discovered the trend offered a raw and clear view into the author’s life. There were no filters on what the authors published and we got to see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurs in all our lives but which few of us ever share with others. It was the next evolution of reality TV. No longer were the stations and producers deciding what we at home got to see. People could now open up their lives for anybody and everybody to peer into and the most successful ones were those that offered the most unrefined and uncensored vision possible.

But as always, people sitting at home thought to themselves, “Pfft, I could do a much better version of this.” With reality TV, that meant they had to compete against thousands of others and get cast on the show. With blogs, that meant all they had to do was create a free account and start posting.

And for every worthwhile blog that has cropped up each day due to all the attention CNN and Fox News have given bloggers in the past year or two, 79,999 horrible ones featuring high school kids giving bad movie reviews or some pissed off patriot talking about how we need to support President Bush suddenly appear on the Internet. I had hoped blogging would be a flavor of the month with the general public, like pogs or those slap bracelets people always had in middle school. God we looked retarded walking around with those on our wrists. But instead, it looks like blogging’s here to stay with every soccer mom and NASCAR car dad out there, along with those retarded terms the news media like to make up, like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

All this does is dilute the pool even more. As a reader, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a decent blog nowadays. Most of my all-time favorite blogs are still the ones I unearthed long before Shyzer was ever conceived. But 2005 saw the closings of the last holdouts of that generation, most notably Doc from Doctor Grosz. And with that said, given my odds, I feel confidant in saying I’d put Shyzer up against any other random blog out there - that is, whenever I have it running on all cylinders. I don’t try to be perfect in everything, but I most certainly strive for perfection in anything I do happen to partake in. If I’m going to spend my time on something, I’ll be damned if the final output isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible.

I enjoy the uniqueness and randomness of my personality. Given the option of taking two roads, I most certainly will always select the one less traveled. Not because of some idealistic, romanticized view I hold on life, but simply for the selfish reason that I hate being like everybody else. Remember, this is the guy who as a kid, pulled out a map and found the city farthest away from his hometown when he decided he needed to pick a baseball team to root for.

For what’s the point of screaming when everybody around you is screaming the exact same thing?

That said, I hate admitting to myself that Shyzer has slipped in terms of quality lately. I’m lucky if I have this baby operating like I do with a rough hangover, much less running to the standard I expect from myself. Couple that with the unnecessary stress of updating every few days and the fact that I’m partaking in an art form that everybody else seems to be enjoying, and you can see why the idea of closing shop seems appealing at times.

And yet I can’t bring myself to do it. This isn’t just some website to me. I truly view Shyzer as an extension of myself, for better or worse. What I want is for Shyzer to regain some of its uniqueness that it once held and to start properly reflecting some of my personality. I don’t want half of the people I know operating sites similar to it and since I know I can’t go back in time and prevent blogs from becoming a cultural phenomenon, I’m left with two choices. On one hand, I could take down all my material and replace everything with a simple splash page like most people who feel the way I do have done…

Or, I could force Shyzer to evolve. I was one step ahead of the curve last time, so why not do it again? Plus, if everybody before me is closing shop, wouldn’t I be contradicting my own philosophy by following suit and turning off the lights as well?

I think this whole post best exemplifies how Shyzer is indeed an extension of myself, for if you think things are a little weird around here, you should take a guided tour through my head. I’ve always been a person who simply does what feels right, not what he thinks he should do next. In times past, I’ve usually listened to my gut and while it’s been known to play tricks on me every now and then, things have always turned out right in the end. See: Mariners, Seattle. Girlfriends, past. Australia, best few months of my life spent in, etc. Yet for the first time in my entire life, nothing feels right and yet nothing feels wrong. I can’t seem to find a clear frequency to my gut and instead all I’m picking up is static. I don’t know what to do next with my life and frankly, it pisses me off far more than it scares me. Fuck not knowing what direction to take Shyzer in, I don’t even know what fucking direction I want my life to travel for the next few years.

Everything I think about doing next sounds at the same time great and horrible. I’m 23 years old and as conceited and naive as it sounds, I still know and believe that I can do something great in my lifetime. I don’t think I’m destined to do something specific, that some higher being put me here just so I could follow a path that was laid for me. But I do feel with every fiber of my being that I have the potential to do and be something great, that greatness is within my grasp if only I discover the path to it before it becomes overgrown with weeds. That’s what I worry about most, missing or ignoring my one true chance at greatness. I’ll never be able to settle on having a “regular” life. If a time traveler from the future came to me right now and told me that in 50 years, I’d be retiring as the district manager of some regional office, I think I’d lose my will to live right then and there. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of simply becoming a small cog in the machine of life, becoming somebody who will be mourned for a few years after his death and then simply forgotten, becoming just like everybody else. Becoming Normal. Becoming Average. Come Hell or high water, I’m going to find a way to make a difference and achieve something, even if it destroys me and sends me to an early grave. And that, my friends, is something I give my word to.

To make matters worse is that despite having more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life and living at home with a family that absolutely adores me, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. I no longer have that one deep and close friendship to rely on like I used to have with a few certain people and for the first time in my life, I’m staring down the barrel of uncertainty utterly and completely alone, with no one standing next to me who entirely and fully understand me. But like they say…well, my knowledge of quotes and proverbs has picked a wonderful time to fail me, but hopefully there’s a saying or two out there that would make me feel better.

I don’t know if you can tell from the way I act on the Internet, but I’m an extremely private person in real life. I don’t like talking about myself or my thoughts or plans or dreams or whatever with most people. Sure, I’m goofy as hell, but rarely in a serious way and more in a comedic relief type manner. Whenever things turn serious, I tighten up and retreat into my head. And that’s where Shyzer’s importance in my life came in. It was an outlet for me to come and say what I thought and be myself and do my thing. And yet, as time has gone on, the occasion of censoring myself has grown more and more frequent and the main cause for this has been due to the fact that I know who is reading Shyzer. I know people don’t want to read some cookie cutter crap that’s censored and refined and even if that’s what they want, I wouldn’t write it since it’s boring as hell to do so. I want to be as candid as possible, but there’s certainly more I wish I could say on here. Fuck, I’ll be honest here. In the past three and a half months alone, I’ve probably stopped myself 20 times from posting something in particular. “Shit, this is totally gonna piss off so and so,” or “Oh fuck, if she reads this, she’ll think I’m a fucking psycho,” or “Dear Christ, it will take all of 10 minutes for my phone to start ringing if I hit the Publish button.” I don’t enjoy defending myself or my actions. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that I should have explain myself to people, partially due to the fact that I don’t like confrontation and partially due to the fact that most people just wouldn’t understand.

I have nobody to blame but myself for getting all my friends and family into reading Shyzer and even as I type this, I hope everybody who reads Shyzer continues to do so. For years now, I’ve been known to pimp Shyzer on a daily basis and the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey you! Yeah, even though we’ve known each other for 15 years and you’ve been reading Shyzer for months now, fuck off so I can have the liberty to say whatever I want.” I promise you, that’s not what I want, at all. As a writer, you want as many people as possible to read what you have to say, even if it might ruffle a few feathers or force a family member or two to disown me.

But even more importantly, I’m going to stop writing what I think people might want to read and start writing what I want to write. If you find the new Shyzer too boring or too one-dimensional (ie, only shit I’m interested in), sorry mates. Like I’ve already said, this is an extension of me, not y’all, and I’m going to try my best to make posting a pleasurable experience for me once again compared to the chore I currently view it as.

So here’s the deal. In a few days, I’m going to open Shyzer’s doors again and try something out. The comments will be turned off, the tagboard will be taken down, and I’m not going to track my stats or see who and how many people are reading what. I desire no feedback on what I write here. If you want to read Shyzer, that’s great and if you don’t, no worries. I am still trying to find my true calling and while this may seem like I’m blaming my lack of vision and initiative on Clay or Fellner reading Shyzer, that’s not it at all. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I’m merely trying to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Perhaps if I clean things up and clear my head here on Shyzer, I’ll be able to do the same thing in real life.

And if that fails, at least I’ll have tried something, because what I’m doing not just ain’t working and I can already hear my window slowly closing.

I was told it was times like these that we learn to live again. So why do I feel like I’ve been lied to?

Next round of the Religion Tournament will be uploaded when I wake up. Next version of Shyzer will be uploaded whenever I feel like it.