Where Do I Go From Here?

I started blogging back in 2004. That was eight years ago. I remember discovering and getting excited with all of these gay bloggers who, thanks to the relative anonymity of the Internet, had given voice to our pink concerns. Now, I said, I can also hear my voice in others.

It was my friend Nelz whose blog I read first. I was amazed at his chutzpa in posting intimate, graphic details of his sexcapades. From Nelz’s blog list, I started blog-hopping, discovering other pink voices. Some were more graphic than Nelz, others were more circumspect. And that got me wondering. How much of it on the Net is the truth, and how much is just press release? Is there a way to tiptoe on that fine line between the two?

My original intention for The McVie Show was to come up with a “personal diary” that was as much a show as it was truthful. Present my life in an entertaining way, for there is an audience out there (yes, I assumed at least one other person will want to read about me). And because some bloggers were quite prolific, I also wanted to post an entry a day.

After a week or two I tweaked my original “reason for being” and instead opted to present the more entertaining aspects of my life. And what topic was a surefire crowd-drawer? My sexcapades in bathhouses, cinemas, and gym saunas soon became fodder for the Show.

But change was inevitable. Cinemas stopped allowing viewers to sit through multiple screenings. Slimmers World shut down all of their saunas and steam rooms. And my bathhouse stories were compiled and published.

Before one could express oneself in forums and blogs. But then Facebook and Twitter allowed us to rant and rave in a more focused and succinct manner (well, some a lot less wordy than others). Suddenly we had to be all Strunk & Whitean with our tweets and status updates; others chose to go jejemonic and txt-jargonic in their attempt to stay within 140 characters. Still the damage was done. We said things shorter and in an instant. Responses happened in a blink of a refresh. Thanks to comments, likes, and retweets, our singular voices could now be magnified into an online roar. And all that without having to worry about drafts and spell-checks and word crafting.

Blogging became the equivalent of a concept album on vinyl at time when everyone else is shuffling among disparate individual MP3 tracks.

Yesterday I got an email from Nelz. He had stopped blogging years ago. Now he announced that he’s unplugged himself from Facebook, and will now spend his time reading books.

I too have thought of unplugging. But still there’s something that draws me back to my blog. I don’t know what it is, and right now I’m not too keen on finding out what. I am also still figuring out which direction to go. But as the adage says, “The show must go on.”