Footnotes and fish.

I’m back at work and y’all, getting out of bed this morning wasn’t easy.

So, while I’m trying to cure my BlogHer hangover (not to be confused with a real hangover in any way) and wrap my head around the weekend, John is here to talk to you about blogging. Or what he loves about blogging. Or fish. I’m not sure. But he loves footnotes and footnotes make my English teacher heart happy.

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It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you that I truly enjoy blogging. There are the two sides to that equation¹ – the blogging and the reading other bloggers. These are very, very different things in my mind.

When I’m reading other bloggers, I sit back and allow myself to be taken for a ride. There are posts that will make you think. There are posts that will make me laugh. There are posts that make me cry it very f*cking dusty in the room that I’m reading it in. I strap myself in² and let the blogger take me where s/he wants.

A great blog post is like a roller coaster ride. There are dips, and twists, and turns. There are gasps and shocks. The reader doesn’t expect half of them, and the blogger has the reader exactly where s/he wants him/her.

In short, reading a blog post doesn’t allow my mind to think about much beyond the blog post³. I read it, I take some time, I reflect, and in most cases, I try to comment with something person about something in my life that relates to said blog post.

But, writing a blog post? That’s an entirely different kettle of fish⁴.

I type really fast – sometimes, people think I’m just randomly pressing keys in some half-hearted attempt to impress. Who I’d be impressing, or why, I don’t know, but, well, people just don’t think I’m actually typing when they see or hear me typing.

But, I type really fast⁵, about at the same speed that I talk. My blogging, therefore, is me dictating to myself. This means a few different things. The first is that I pause when I speak when I write a pause in my writing . . . seriously, my writing is really damn close to my actual speaking.

Second, is my love of footnotes.

See, when I’m writing, I’m telling one big story. But as I’m going about telling that story, I need to make decisions about which way to take the story⁷, but I never want to lose thought of the path not taken.

In short, as I’m writing, my mind is going through it’s very own episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Instead of ignoring these voices, if the little side-story that I’m tempted to hop into are moderately amusing, I’ll ignore the traditional footnote⁸ and just throw one in.

I actually have Dave Barry⁹ to thank for a lot of my writing style. Keep things conversational, and if you can get a laugh, all the better.

So, to recap, I love boobs footnotes, because they allow those little voices that poke fun at me to be shared . . . and, you know, every now and then, prompt me to expand what was a throw-away thought into a full-blown blog post (because, let’s face it, determining what to write about, most of the time, is the bigger challenge than actually writing the post).