second.

On navel-gazing (subject courtesy of one portion of "Keep it Real": it's always been a concept that is both clear and unclear to me. On one hand, it seems natural that people should want to talk about themselves. Rarely does anyone ask "how was your day" and mean it if they do not want to be asked the same thing. Like an invitation to navel-gazing, please, please, tell me about your life. Even the people who never know what to say can find words, if the words are about themselves.

And of course, I wouldn't say that I am any exception to this.  The interrogation tools are unnecessary, I can go on at length if you need, I promise.  The problem, however-- as though there is only one problem with this, that's almost a joke, and you can laugh-- is very, very simple.

I am a constant sufferer of a condition that I call "being painfully boring."  Awful, dreadful, terrible.  Of course, it only takes the right words to make boring exciting and the wrong ones to make the most exciting days as dry as the crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.  Yes, yes, certainly, I will tell you about my day, and then I have to put in all that effort to make it sound good.  Readable, if you wanted.  Such pressure!

Navel-gazing is somewhat of an act, putting yourself in this cage at a zoo for all to see.  You write, scratch on the paper like a monkey would its head, people watch.  Look, it's creating something.  Look, it's a story. Or maybe excrement.  It's easier to create the latter than the former, and so the latter is often what readers get.  What a shame.

Of course, isn't this own work some sort of navel-gazing?  This whole blog, in fact.  Me looking for enlightenment, or answers to everything, writing my thoughts down as if they may lead to that for me or for someone else.  Self-indulgence, really.  Complete and utter excrement.

I try, I do, to make something more than that.  A piece of work, something proper.  To write about myself as a person and not as a tool of my own writing, a hand wielding itself.  To answer those questions about myself because anyone asking deserves more than the act of looking down at oneself, taking a lifeless photograph and uploading it without comment.  It's the least I can do, of course.  That, and return the favor:

How was your day?