I Do It For The Fans

Ever since I started tracking the hits on this blog, things have gotten a little nuts. Now that I can actually see who's checking in every day, I'm obsessed with creating new and interesting content on a daily basis. I can't write without an audience, and now that I've got one, I'm hungry for more. I am officially losing my shit.

By night, I'm trying to create some sort of interesting emotional backdrop to my Australian adventures. I've gotten a few requests from readers, and I really want to honor them.

By day, I'm trying to generate audience attention by promoting local events (only good ones), blogging about being frustrated at work and weird shit that happens in the men's room. Also I have a full-time job as a banking researcher.

To reiterate, I fell in love online with an Australian woman, sold everything to get there, then it freaking worked out so I stayed with her for nine months and lived in Western Australia as an illegal alien. I worked as a furniture mover, stonemason, kangaroo shooter, dishwasher and freelance writer. Now I'm home working a fulltime job as a researcher in Washington, D.C. There's a globetrotting, gore-soaked romantic coming of age story for your mind in there somewhere.

In order to honor those requests, I am trying to fictionalize an already incredible story for those who have no time for navel-gazing. I'm trying to extract bits of my own life for the world to read and it's actually fairly difficult and terrifying. Not that you would know, because most of it is parked on my hard drive to be edited and re-edited until it's probably just a haiku about universal yearning.

Adventure is extreme discomfort, experienced vicariously. Readers have to connect emotionally with the characters in a story (which is in this case, me, my girlfriend and my actual life) without feeling like they are just reading someone's diary. You people also need to stay just distant enough to be able to have big laugh at my expense.

More to the point, I feel like this blog is a fictionalized version of a life in progress. It's told in a staggering blur of flashbacks and realtime, so that if it were a movie, you really would crave the comparatively mainstream narrative utilized in Memento.

I'm fictionalizing everything in here in order to make it a) funny b) attractive to those who make magazine, book, or movie deals, and c) hurt less when I get rejected and criticized. If you're feeling a), or have the power to do b), let me know by either leaving a comment or emailing me directly at jeff.simmermon@gmail.com. If c) is more your thing, I can't really stop you, can I?

This is serious business. It's cutting into my workplace productivity and my sleep. But I feel like this is my shot at my real creative life. Working as a banking researcher is a thrill-a-minute and all, but I ultimately want something else.

Long story short, I'm so grateful to have people read this thing. I can see every hit that I get, and it's like a tiny valentine every time. It validates my existence every time I hear that someone actually forwarded someone I don't even know something that I wrote. So when I go a couple days without posting, it's pretty serious. Please, just stay patient, keep checking in, and toss the insecure dragon that is my ego as many feedback tips as you can.

Thanks.

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 8:41 AM