 The first part of this discusses the pictures that I screwed up, oh, it’s just another me thing….can’t begin to hate myself at this late date–and can’t undo the more. There is a post underneath. It begins in Riverside Park, and was really cool because a picture included my building among others. Very acute, yeah–great word, Pia–astute, Courting readers might have guessed it. Actually this picture, if you can still see it, shows my building.
After I wrote the post I felt fearful as if I were committing some crime against blogging. But it’s the magazine that was; yet I still feel unclean. As if I were mentioning the unmentionable writing class. I am the ideal person to write this; I haven’t made a cent off blogging and I have great stats.Â
The possee that I mention, later. It’s one of several. One being BIO of course. another being loosely associated with Dawg Duke D, and many individuals. As I am in real life, I am in blogging. I have discovered that most people are or become their true selves. Can’t hide under a false identity; bloggers, least the ones I know, are too smart. Screen names and personas yes. We all, or the better of us, have many personas and after awhile bloggers or blogists show all their personas. Forgot to mention that Sar has a great caption contest on Tuesdays!Â
One night a few years ago, I went with Rafe, his wife and a few other friends for dinner at midnight at The Boat Basin. The waiter sat down and had dinner with us. Nobody asked him to; there wasn’t even room. He found a chair and talked.
 He told us his life story. It was a familiar one, one we have heard too many times over the years.
In New York almost no waiter is really a waiter; no person is really what they do. People wait for their big break for many years. And one day they realize that they’ve been making so much money being something else they no longer have any real desire to be an actor, a singer, a writer, or a musician
But still they always wonder, no matter how successful they have become; if they only worked a bit harder, only took a few more lessons, only smiled at a certain person, took each opportunity that they didn’t know they had, trampled over ten people, could they possibly have made it in the arts?
I don’t know the people who go home in defeat. I’m a born and bred New Yorker; no place to lick my wounds but New York. So I’m kind of forced to be successful despite myself.
I know the hedge fund director who wanted to be an opera star; the lawyer who should have been on Broadway; the writer who wanted to make it inf fiction but had to settle for magazine stories and ghost written books.Â
I also know the Executive Assistant who can’t afford her rent, and supers who make six figures with a free apartment and generous tips, and supers who make almost nothing. The contrasts in New York are cliches because they are truths, and startling ones.
Mostly I do know people who once had so many other dreams.
Are they successful? To you, yes; to them well the dream still lingers. Maybe someday they thought. Maybe you think that people who yearn for artistic success past youth, and youth is defined differently here or by different people are immature or clinging to false yearnings. But why? It’s not as if they’re living off the system or their families.
 Patrick had been offered a role in a Broadway show. He turned it down because he had a secure job. The play was successful. Patrick died anyway, at 32. After he died, his father cried to me. Cried because he had instilled the great American work ethic too successfully in his son.
When that day happened, five miles south of here, and many of us realized that if we didn’t go for our dreams, why the hell why we living here?.
I feel unbearably sad today. NY Mag, don’t feel like shilling for them and I’m usually overly generous, had an issue on blogging. In many ways they reduced success in blogging to financial success.Â
Yes I’m using blogging, in some ways, as a means to an end. It’s writing constantly, though my book writing is way different; I know I’m talented and constantly getting better. It’s amazing to be able to practice to a crowd. And yes I hope that even if you don’t remember me, you remember and/or know my blog, and buy my book.
The one that get written between blogging, comments, email thread, and various other things all in the name of my memoir. It’s good. The problem is that I no longer find myself fascinated by all things Pia; maybe that works in my favor.
I have made such good friends. Don’t have to shout you out; y’all know who you are. Must add that the wonderful, Miz Bohemia is truly one of the funniest people I have ever met. This posse we have been forming is incredible, and yes blogging is a true revolution in many ways, including a way to meet amazing people who are anything but the pathetic creatures so often portrayed in film, TV, books and magazines.
But Miz Boho and Cranky discussing toilet training? Involving duct tape, I believe. Don’t want to remember–it’s in comments in her blog. That’s what blogging is all about to me. Two very intelligent people, both blogging friends from different circles discussing every day subjects. Though the duct tape…might have been a figment of my imagination, I’m tired and have to be up in a few hours which somehow makes me more tired;
But NY Mag made me feel like a bottom of the alphabet blogger. I’m not that D woman nor would I want to be. She hit blogging during the first wave; I hit it during the BE wave. It had already been popular, and I came late to the party. But before just before most other people, and I have considered myself to be a blogging success, and how sad that sounds.
Big life accomplishment: I’m an “S” list blogger. Oh but I’m on Neil’s blogroll and he’s a “C” list blogger. He’s one of the two best story tellers in the blogosphere; I would rate him “A-” Was in class with “S” on the “A” list–not NY Mag’s but they’re saving her for the heavy stuff.Â
Do I add letters for that? Hypothetically, what if I’m going to be in a person’s memoir? Won’t add the other hypothetical about his memoir, I’m too superstitious. Will just say that I dream big for everybody I care about. And I really bear no malice toward anybody. Well, maybe the entire Bush admin–no not even them.
The only person holding me back from my dream is me. I know that. Blogging has shown me that I can attract and hold an audience. I chose not to have children so I don’t have the very real excuse of a family.
I don’t regret that decision. Maybe I will someday but I have always believed that if you consciously make a choice then you live with the consequences without looking back. Yeah I look back. Believe in history.
And who am I kidding? I love having a past worth writing about. Want the present and the future to be that worthy. Just never want to give up on my dream; but would like it to happen while I can still appreciate it. Like my bottom of the alphabet blogging status truthfully.
New York mag made me feel cheap. As if blogging was only about money, and if you’re not making the bucks, you’re just not a successful blogger. Blogging’s too new to be defined that way. We’re only beginning to explore its potential. But now everybody in New York will be an expert on blogging because they read one frigging article.Â
Yeah, I’m angry. Blog shares shows up on search engines. Do you understand Blog shares? I’m an investor, really, and I have no idea what that game is about. But I’m sure the much better minds than mine that play it understand the key to life.
I hate assuming that life is certain; I hate believing that variable don’t change. I hate people who walk around with fixed notions about people and ideas. If anybody has learned anything in the past four years it’s that nothing is forever, nothing is fixed.
But who am I? Just a bottom of the alphabet blogger. The person who wakes up early to hear news about celebrities and puts it in his blog; he’s worthy. Somehow I can’t help thinking that is not what blogging is going to be all about in five years. And I love gossip. Except last night when I heard ice being chopped, I kept hearing this refrain in my head:
 ”Lindsay Lohan,” “Mandy Moore.” Kind of got the Lohan thing, but Mandy Moore? Not even going to begin to analyze that, or my feelings about selling products on blogs, or linkage as a lifestyle and social phenomena. How people link yes; why people link, yes. But why bloggers link to other bloggers who aren’t in the top one hundred, and why blogging becomes so vital to people who aren’t making money off it.
Blogging is fascinating in itself, and New York Mag reduced it to economic value. That’s so frigging New York; maybe all of America, maybe all of the world. Maybe I just refuse to see reality and reduce pleasure to dollar and cents. Maybe I’m just delusional.
Know the pictures below aren’t showing. Can’t care right now. Have a killer dentist appointment tomorrow and am beginning to lose patience. But I can’t at this late date, so… And my server keeps going down.Â
It’s all fascinating and ny mag gets only one little aspect of it, the others are yet to be written about or maybe can’t be because they are harder to explain. Blog shares..I checked into mine twice over the last month and I really have no idea how to do it..i decided to buy some stock in my blog..for some reason i didn’t have enough money so i left….hopefully I do better in the real stick market. Who has the time to figure it all out…
Sometimes I feel like a broken record here. But I honestly felt like this was one of the best Pia posts ever.
And you know I wouldn’t just say that. Agree with so much you said. But don’t want to write my own post here. Just deleted about three paragraphs. I’ll email it or something
pia has a way of bringing out the posts of other posters after her posts…………and that means she is spectacular.
i like the fact that your life was/is worth writing about. i can only wish for the same. such a sizzling past makes the trials of the present more bearable. keep writing, your audience is far and wide, and will only expand with time. Good writing always gets noticed.
It’s soo wierd I was having a conversation like this today, I hate my job.. but do it anyway cos I need the money, ultimately I should follow my dream that could potentially leave me a billioniare.. but what if it doesn’t?
Sometimes we as people get so comfortable… we forget what really drives us.
I have told u how much I love ur blog, and that’s because it is real… I browse blogs and allot of them aren’t ‘real content’ anymore, it’s as if everyone is writing in hopes of getting a book deal… Or blog shares!!
It’all soo ridiculous.
I wouldn’t where to begin with all I want to say about this post but where I to begin I would not know where to stop… so I shall keep it brief as Bone did before me…
It was an absolutely beautiful post Pia. Eyes wide open and reading away, I felt as though I had them shut and in the darkness heard this beautiful voice, transporting me away to different places and ultimately, to the innermost recesses of her mind… and I loved what I saw… thank you.
Hmm very analytical! I wonder what list I am on in NY mag? I agree that you are the one that holds her own dreams…:0
That was a very interesting perspective on blogging. Well done. At some point you’ll explain the letters?
Signed,
A Q-list blogger
As always, Pia, beautiful post.
Pia, I absolutely love your blog. I lurk, I leave without commenting much of the time because I wish to simply have the experience and then move on with my day. Who the fuck cares what the stats are? You have a tool here that keeps you creative, even when you are between writing your other stuff. It’s like piano practice – and some piano practice sounds awesome wafting through my apartment windows. The fact that some people have managed to turn blogs into book deals shows the present trend in our society at looking for the easy bottom line – it’s like movie remakes. Interested people say, “well so and so gets X amount of readers already – so it should be a cinch to sell” – they might not have even read the material. They just looked at the numbers. How dreary. And too bad for the blogger because they might have actually had talent.
To me, blogging is an outlet. It gives me permission to write – which I never allowed myself to do, and surprisingly make a few cyber chums along the way – the second I started getting readers though – I felt pressure to churn stuff out that had to be better. Which is stupid, because it’s not a newspaper column, it’s not my job, it’s not the novel or play I’ve been working on for years – it’s a blog. It’s piano practice – or a way to vent my feelings when I am too bottled up to share them with people who actually know me face to face. But this medium will always remain something that is far more important for me to read – than it is for me to be read. You and Cranky and Dead Guy and Rhonda, Jet, Waiter Rant, and so many others – are way too fucking interesting. And life has become way too short to sweat the small stuff.
Happy Valentines day!
Well Pia,
If you figure out how to get out of your own way and let the success in, will you clue me in as well?
Your one of the “Wild Women” I look up to Pia.
I want to be on the Q list it sounds like a cool list.
hi, here is my new blog address. please update your links! xoxo
http://howtobeakidagain.blogspot.com
I have never had much regard for New York Magazine. I don’t know who lives in the New York they write about, but I know I don’t. Their New York is about a supermodel, where mine is about a salty pretzel; theirs is about a real estate mogul while mine is about seeing a great new band in a tiny room. Theirs is about the latest socialitee ball; mine is about catching up on last night’s game in the Post while having breakfast in a Greek diner.
Theirs is about choosing the best school for your 2-year-old. Mine is about–
–Oops. I went one too many.
New York…magazine…blog shares…huh? gads. this is the problem with vanishing off the face of the earth for a month. this is not an actual return to the face of the earth either – just a quick catch-up, I’m just laughing that I can be so clueless as to totally NOT know about this article. yeesh.
And yes, you’re right! Summertime! Time for summertime!
oh and btw, I agree with Josh. I subscribed to New York magazine for all of the first year I lived in New York. Since then the only one I’ve looked at was one that was left in the restroom at Pier 63 & had some really eyecatchingly lurid cover story, about which I now can’t remember one single detail except that it was about some guy (and that’s hardly a detail).
Never said it but while I’m resurfacing for a second, the new BIO looks great. Wish I had more time to read. Sorry went away. OK, the grindstone needs my nose now.