We Made a Blog

It’s amazing how much time you can put into something when you want to.

For the most part I’m lazy and under-motivated. Which is a little surprising when I look at my life from the outside. It isn’t like I don’t do anything. I have a full-time job, run a side-business with a friend and I’m going to be an adjunct professor this Spring.

Sometimes I really don’t understand how I am where I am. I don’t mean that in a bragging manner. It’s just disbelief  that I am somewhat successful, yet I know full well that I could probably sit on a couch for a week with a stack of DVDs and not get bored.

I seem to run on a personality-cocktail of good fortune, some wit, general friendliness, (apparently) ahead of the curve intelligence, being in the right place at the right time and not turning down any opportunity. I think it’s that last trait that has helped me the most. When it comes to my professional career I’ve never turned anything down. Luckily I had things to “not turn down,” of course, but I didn’t.

I tried.

This blog, for example, was a case of creating opportunity for myself. I was extremely lucky to be working with Chandra at the time and got along well enough with my developer Pete to become a friend and business partner.  So I set out to create this.

I spent so much time refining the design. Far too many nights pouring over Photoshop until I got the exact look and feel I wanted. The endless iterations and self-doubt.  And then there’s the requirement gathering, working with the developer who thinks you’re crazy, convincing Chandra to write with me; essentially the nasty bits we designers often forget. It’s just a ridiculous amount of work.

But hey, here it is — we did it.

Then came the writing. The lack of hits. The tweaking. The maintaining standards. The random stints of lost interest. So you stop. But it pisses you off that you stopped. Remember how much time you put into it?

I know what it takes to stay motivated to do something. Luckily, in the most important times I am able to. I wonder how you take hardcore determination and turn it into sustainable, mild determination.

I think that’s exactly what I’m looking for: a mild determination.

Time for a nap.

Sometimes a song is the only adequate way to complete a description of a feeling. It’s why people choose them for weddings and and put them on movie soundtracks. So we’ve chosen one for this, the blog’s first anniversary.

You would think that if we had to narrow down to one song what We Made a Blog is about, it would be by the likes of LCD Soundsystem or The Cool Kids (who we do both love). But the really appropriate song was around before them or either of us.

“The Only Living Boy in New York” is a song Paul Simon wrote for Art Garfunkel. Simon’s in his city – our city – and he’s seeing his creative partner off on other artistic pursuits. It’s a beautiful early morning in New York, where just the part of the sky visible through the buildings seems like a vast expanse, and Garfunkel has already flown off and Simon is wishing that everyone out there sees the beauty of the talent in his friend that he sees. He’s alone in his thoughts, temporarily without someone who gets them, but happy in a place he loves.

WMAB is two people on separate artistic paths but with the same vision. Together we merge our talents in this space and apart we hope that the world recognizes in the other what we do. And, of course, there’s our silent partner, New York. Like all good silent partners, it’s the one that makes everything possible.

Oh, Goods, how you’ve let me down. It’s especially heartbreaking since things between us started out so beautifully. For weeks, I anticipated the day the windows of your chrome trailer would open. I even showed up early on a false report that they had. Dutifully, I waited and we finally had our first meeting.

I fell for your sausage, egg and cheese on a biscuit – and the beignets on the side, too. Then I had the fried green tomato sandwich and I couldn’t stop gushing about this magical, stationary food truck that had appeared two blocks away from my apartment. For about two months of Sundays, I would have my ritual tomato sandwich. Then a waitress suggested I try the oyster fritter sandwich. This is when things started to go sour.

That sandwich was actually quite good – not great, but solidly good. So, I thought, what about the rest of your menu? First up, the hot dog. It doesn’t matter how organic or closely grown a product is to where it’s being sold, taste is taste, and you either have it or you don’t. The dog did not. I might as well have been eating a veggie dog – a very expensive veggie dog, at that.

OK, so one negative. No reason to panic, but I was starting to see why so many said you were “overpriced” and “not very good.” But I stuck to what I liked about you and life went on wonderfully for us both. Then you committed an unforgivable sin, one of biblical proportion.

We’d never spent the afternoon together, so I hadn’t had your weekend special: fried chicken. Until last week. You’re selling chicken in the same town as Pies ‘n’ Thighs, so I figured you wouldn’t be messing around. I drooled in anticipation from order until delivery. What came after was a monumental disappointment.

There was the taste of par-boiled, then fried chicken that comes at the pre-hot sauce stage of buffalo wings. The chicken didn’t suffer the usual list of complaints, meat on the dry side, soft skin, etc. It was cooked ‘properly,’ it just didn’t taste like anything.  On top of it (literally) was a sauce whose beginnings seemed to be juice squeezed out of a plastic lemon. When I suggested to my friend that you don’t come close to matching Pies ‘n’ Thighs’ delights, he remarked, much more tellingly, that you don’t “stack up against KFC.” And he’s right – about taste and price (not that I’m endorsing fast food). For $10, I felt like you were flipping me the bird. And about the $10 octopus dish I was served: Thanks for the two pieces of octopus. The pound of chick peas and faro at the bottom was quite tasty, but I don’t think it’s enough to repair things between us.

We’re big fans of the HBO TV show “Bored to Death.” It takes place in Brooklyn (where one of us lives), follows a writer distracting themselves from the terrors of a second book (just like the other one of us) and has the perfect balance of quirk and snark.

Sunday night ()20 p.m. ET) sees the return of the show, with “Escape from the Dungeon.” If you can’t wait until then for a reunion, watch the trailer or retrace Jonathan, Ray and George’s steps from last season with the “Bored in Brooklyn” map.