Holy Dickstain, It's... MY MASONIC APRON'S LAST BLOG POST!

Well. That got your attention, didn't it?

Good.

I've gotten your attention for some time on this blog, and that's been nice, to varying degrees, but I'm done doing that now.

Looking back on many of the posts I've written, I've noticed that I have a habit of starting out many a paragraph with the phrase, "Life's funny", and I do that because it is-- life is funny-- and because I'm stalling while thinking of something to say. Thinking on my feet. Something you're not really supposed to have to want to need to do while you're writing. That's more of a talking thing to have to do. But I think on my feet when I write, because I don't plan out what I have to say, because that would bore me.

Well, thinking on my feet while writing has started to bore me. It's probably started boring you, too. I can feel it.

It's easy to know when something's over, but it's harder to admit it. This blog was over a while ago, but I kept it going, like people do in relationships, because the sex is good, or because your toothbrush is at her place, or because he has a car and you don't or because she makes a mean bolognese.

I was comfortable here, not happy. There's a difference. You can be both and survive just fine, like I do in my marriage: comfortable and happy. On my blog, however, I was just comfortable, and that just doesn't last.

"My Masonic Apron" was a challenging exercise for me. Be interesting, engaging, funny, topical, witty, passionate, silly, obtuse, frustrating, apathetic, empathetic, ridiculous, superfluous, just be... something.

And I did that. For a while, I did that.

And I'm done doing that.

Last August, I threw in the towel on this shit for a brief time while searching for a job, because this blog was an unnecessary distraction from seeking gainful employment. And I found gainful employment, and I came back. But now I'm facing new challenges. Twins are around the corner, and I need to figure out a way to take an essentially desperately unmarketable person and turn an hourly wage into a salary, a job into a career, a boy into a man. I need to re-Bar Mitzvah, and gifts are graciously accepted.

(Fuck yea.)

I won't pretend that I'm not going to miss this. But I'll also confess that it's less about the blog, and less about the blogging, and less about you, than it is about missing the comfort of something that has become so routine.

I love routines, you know. You know that. You know everything.

Well. Not everything.

No.

You know what I tell you, but I know so very little that you can't know more than a very little.

I won't be deleting the blog-- that would be kind of stupid, and it would rob future generations of trouser-free Googlers the joy of stumbling upon this site upon entering search terms like, "sheep fuck apron" and "alastair atchison" and "mumia abu-jamal" and "totes mcgoats".

Such a colorful array of topics. Such a charmed life I lead.

I'll bet I'll be tempted to come back here and spew bile about the Fort Knox-like protections on our orange juice bottle, or memorialize Finley when he dies, or to brag about the twins when they're born, but I don't think that will be happening. When I say goodbye, it's usually not "so long."

I wanted to get to 1,000 posts. Really I did. But, really, what's the fucking difference? A thousand, nine hundred-and-whatever-- who cares? I'm also tempted to delude myself into thinking, if I'd put more energy into creative writing since 2009, I'd be a published author again by now, but that's probably nonsense. I peaked at 21-- ask anybody I went to college with. Just not the girls I fucked. They definitely wouldn't agree.

I kept my identity a secret on this blog because I have/had aspirations of being a teacher-- and I am a teacher in a lot of ways, and I work with psych patients, and I don't want to get fired because I have a potty mouth. I'm always afraid of getting fired, of being found out, and my therapist opined last week that maybe I was most afraid of finding myself out.

I think he's right.

I'm writing this on Sunday night-- September the 11th-- and I was going to have it auto-post at 7:18am, the usual time, but I kind of can't wait, so I'm going to let it go now. I'm kind of excited to start my new life, free from, well, this. I think it's going to make me sad, like any loss does, but I think it's going to feel better in time.

I think I'm going to be better, in time.

I can't tell you how proud I am of this thing-- this thing that eventually made me sick-- but I'm far prouder of the fact that it was my writing that brought you into my life. You know, back in 2003, it was the bizarre, sardonic, clever J-Date profile that successfully seduced the girl who would eventually become my wife and the mother of our twins. And it worked on you, too.

Sucker.

I love you.

Last Blog Post

Now, before you all go start preparing to sue me or picket outside my house-- relax. This isn't my last blog post. This is a post about other peoples' last blog posts.

So cool your jets... your lovely, lovely jets.

Sometimes, when I'm painfully bored, I go trolling through the seemingly infinite profiles of www.20sb.net to see who's blogging about what, who's holding a camera up in front of her face, who's posting YouTube videos and pictures of cats in septic tanks, who's being snarky and tell-it-like-it-is-y in the D.C. Metro area, who's giving profanity-laden advice to Dear Abby readers-- oh, wait, that's me.

Also, who's out there putting their nose to the grindstone and creating consistent, quality work that will improve my worldview by reading it. That's how I found some of you goobersteins. I mean, it's not like the goddamn Blog Faerie is whispering hot referral tips into my ear or rolling around on my desktop rubbing pixie-dust onto her twin sister bare midriff.

Oftentimes, when I stumble upon a blogger with an interesting and engaging profile and I click on the link to their blog I am dismayed to see a last publication date of 02/04/2008 or maybe three or four months ago. Some of them have that cold, antiseptic, marble-hued "The blog you are looking for is no longer available." or "This Blogger account has been disabled by the administrator."

The absence or removal of a blog always piques my curiosity, so much more than any one single extant post could. Sometimes, the blogger leaves a fare-thee-well message-- like one I recently stumbled onto where the last picture is of a proudly outstretched left hand bearing a shimmery engagement ring. Obviously, this blogger has wedding plans to attend to and blogging no longer fits in with her single-life routine. I get that-- but lots of times there is no good-bye message, just an ordinary-sounding final post about American Idol or a home-made macaroni and cheese recipie and I wonder-- what the fuck?

What happened?

Did the person just run out of steam? Were they out of inspiration or ideas or motivation? Were they hit by a mass transit vehicle? Did they collapse from too much froth in their mochaccino? Maybe they were arrested for running a crystal meth lab or a kiddie porn... amusement park...

While I have absolutely no statistical information to back this assertion up, I feel like maybe a reason why a significant number of bloggers give up blogging is that they've been "found out." Now, obviously, this doesn't account for bloggers who use their full and real names, have linked up their blog using the Networked Blog feature on Facebook-- I mean, they're not afraid of getting outed. It's us anonymous bloggers, or the ones who think we're anonymous. One day, most, if not all of us will get that dreaded email, or comment, or follower that lets us unequivocally know,

"I found you."

Maybe it's an ex-lover, a former or soon-to-be-former friend, a sibling, a parent (oy), or perhaps most disconcertingly, an employer. I'm sure some bloggers have said "bye-bye" to their privacy, their anonymity, their reputations, and their jobs all in a matter of minutes once the wrong person has stumbled across their blog.

Take mine, for instance. At 308 posts, (not including this one) there's a lot of shit in here that could seriously fuck me over, personally and professionally, if the wrong people found their weary way here. Is that a risk that I take by putting myself out there? Absolutely. Do I believe that people should have the privilege to express themselves freely and without identification if their words are not causing direct or indirect harm to another person? Well, obviously. Is that always the case?

No. It isn't. And I think that, more than anything, is why bloggers disappear on us.

Of course some of them just plain don't give a shit anymore and give up-- I know that. Between this blog and my last blog (oh, yeah-- I shut down a blog of mine before, too, and it's because I was almost found out, no-no style) I've been blogging for just around a year-- so maybe I'll be burned out somewhere around year three or four. I don't know-- maybe I won't get there altogether.

I don't know how "My Masonic Apron" is going to end, but I think I'm kind of okay with that (notice the confidence?) See-- when I'm writing a piece of fiction or a play (not that I've done either of those in a while) I don't know how those things are going to end either-- and yet I go through with it, and the ending, well, it always comes... and usually without much of my help. Create characters and a situation and it all comes to a head quite naturally. Certainly a blog isn't the same thing as a story or a play-- and there are outside influences at work here in terms of readers and followers and Google-snoopers, but all things end-- somehow, some way.

I just hope that, when the end comes, I'm in the driver's seat, that the end is my choice and is not made in haste to save my ass, or after it's too late.

And, more than anything, I hope I get to say goodbye.