Nine years of drivel

As I sat here and tried to decide what sort of drivel might fit on this page today, I realized I’ve been writing on Rapid Eye Reality for nine years now. It was around this time in 2001 that my friend Susannah and I sat at a shrimp boil on Tybee Island where we were celebrating our friends’ Mike and Julia getting married. Susannah asked me if I knew what a blog was. A week or so later, I created Rapid Eye Reality. The title–which many people have asked about over the years–was initially based on the blog’s original theme. I planned to record a nightly dream and compare it to the reality of the day. I quickly realized that the only thing people care less about than another person’s reality is another person’s dreams…and cats. So, the theme quickly disappeared, but the title and blog remained.

Many of the friends I’ve made in the blogging community long ago gave up the blogging game in favor of Twitter and Facebook. Others who still blog are having existentialist crises over why they even bother anymore. I go through similar personal stalemates from time to time. I make next to no money on this blog. I don’t have mad traffic. I don’t have a niche. My friends once spent a good hour giggling over an easy parody of RER that centered around a man’s obsession with his family and the house he lived in with his friends more than a decade before.

If I am being honest, I write here for two reasons. First, I have to write. If I don’t write, I’d end up drinking (more) or standing on the streets holding up signs proclaiming the end times. It’s a sickness. Some people work. Some people work out. Some people play music. I write. Even if I don’t get paid for it. Even if it’s not good. Even if it’s complete drivel. I write. It’s been this way since I knew how to write. There wasn’t a time I wasn’t writing something, filling comp books, or sending long detailed emails to all my friends (anyone remember the Deep South Update?). For the past nine years, it’s been a blog.

Second, I can admit enough vanity to also admit I want people to read what I write. I’ve never really understood that part of me. It’s common knowledge that I don’t like myself very much, so I don’t know why I do this. But I do and have for nine years now.

Here’s a few random-ish pieces from over the years:

Grandpa was a gambler
Suburban landscapes
Otis and magic door
A Night at Jimmyz
Walking in Deauville
Sinner and a sinner’s son
The Brett Favre of parenting
Cocaine cabbies
The superpancho
Dog days
One Night in South Carolina

And finally, a funny cached copy of how this blog looked after six months of existence (it takes a few seconds for the images to load).