Having a blog is an embarrassing and often downright tedious extension of the self, rather like having smelly feet and asking your friends if they'd be interested in sniffing them once or twice a week. It is a particularly pungent form of electronic body-odor for which the only available deodorant is a link to the Onion website.
In fact, the very existence of your blog is a dirty little secret that most people would prefer to remain undisclosed. Your blog is an Internet version of Mr Rochester's mad woman locked in the attic; an online equivalent of Dorian Gray's deteriorating portrait; an HTML simulacrum of ... oh I could go on and on - this is a blog, after all - but I think you get the picture.
Of course, as far as embarrassing and often downright tedious blogs go, writing a blog about your own health problems must be the lowest of the low. Surely it is a monstrously selfish act to burden your loved ones with the responsibility of reading interminable paragraphs about clogged arteries, blood pressure fluctuation, cholesterol pills and hardcore constipation. Even the most thrilling of thriller writers would fail to make an electrocardiograph session sound interesting. Consequently I don't simply tell people I have a blog about heart disease, I break the news to them as gently as possible:
"I have some good news and some bad news."
"Okay. Well, give me the good news first."
"I'm pleased to say that my creative juices are flowing again."
"Great. That's awesome. And so what's the bad news?"
"The bad news is that they're flowing into a blog."
"Oh. Gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible news."
"Yes, I know. Believe me, I feel really bad that you have to read it all the time."
There are alternatives to blogging, obviously: social networking sites, for instance, are eponymously not as misanthropic as owning a blog. The mercifully brief format of Twitter might be ideal for disseminating important reports concerning my condition: "Experienced new twinge just now. Calling hospital #pain #anxiety #etc."
Or maybe even Facebook could provide a convenient forum for uploading pithy updates about cholesterol contaminated foods, combined with graphic pictures of my incision scar: Vlad the Impaler Likes This, and so on.
But, alas, mine is an old-fashioned and self-important intellect. My ego needs to stretch and unwind, requiring adequate elbow room for its longueurs, semi-colons, extended metaphors and patronizing allusions; and only the unlimited storage space of a blog will suffice.
So I am left with but a single hope and aspiration, only one excuse: that some fellow heart patient seeking comfort in his darkest hour will read these words and think: "The surgeon will be cracking my chest open tomorrow and attaching my heart to a machine, but at least I'm not a loser blogger like this Baldwin person."
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