Micah Hacim is the co-creator of the zine, Chiaroscuro, and gets ready for work in the morning while listening to Oingo Boingo's Little Girls

I used to write in a livejournal. I didn't update it very often. Mostly about book releases and reviews and interviews and announcements for new stories. I might have written about my personal life two or three times a year. I didn't feel very comfortable doing it. Mostly because I've read a lot of people's livejournals and have been tremendously bored by accounts of their lives.

I didn't want to bore anybody with accounts of my life. So I didn't.

Soon after meeting Mike Young, I started my own blog. I noticed that many writers had blogs. I joined the herd. I thought it might help my book sales.

My book sales have gone down drastically since I started a blog.

The economy has gotten totally fucked since I started a blog.

My rule for my blog was I wasn't allowed to post stories and I wasn't allowed to make it an announcement-only blog like so many others.

I occasionally post story things, so I have disobeyed my rule. I guess it's pretty rare.

I have made some friends through my blog, which has been nice.

I have tried to entertain the readers of my blog, but I occasionally don't care and post about boring shit.

I often post about my life, which I think is pretty dull. But the dullness is occasionally broken up by little things of interest.

Like a couple coming into my work and asking if we had lube. The woman said, "It's for his ass." The man said, "No, it's for hers." I told them that we didn't have lube, even though we had vaseline. It did cross my mind that vaseline is lube. When I think of the word, "lube," I think of a tube of something that is bought in a sex shop. So they asked me if I knew where they could buy lube. I said, "Maybe Stop and Shop, but it closes in fifteen minutes." They rushed off to buy it. They came back a couple of nights later to tell me that they made it to Stop and Shop, but they didn't use the lube that night.

So things like that break up the tedium.

It feels like I'm burning up ideas that I could use for poetry by writing about them on my blog. But that is ok. I'm not a poet.

I also think it's more entertaining when a writer describes boring stuff in their life than a non-writer who is doing the same thing on livejournal.

Writer=someone who gets excited about language

I have included that definition to avoid a pretentious us vs. them mentality.

I like blogger.com a lot for some reason. I like the white on black look of my blog. I sometimes go to my blog and just stare at it. It is a precious thing to me.

Livejournal blogs are kind of diarrhea to the eye.

I don't care if it's a little more difficult for people to read if they're livejournal users. I think I like this for some reason. My blog seems like a separate entity rather than one of ten million blogs on livejournal.

I have a lot of fun writing on my blog. It is a different sort of writing. I don't obsess over every little thing. I just let the words pour out. It is relaxing. It is like a vacation from serious writing.

It took me a little while to be open about myself. I don't know what it is about writing in public that turns off my inner editor. It should really be the opposite. I think that I'm addicted to writing in public. It's like writing in a coffee shop while someone looks over my shoulder, but without the creepiness of a creepy person who is reading my computer screen without my permission. If someone did this in public, it would feel like an invasion of my privacy and make me feel uncomfortable. I'm still trying to determine why it has the opposite effect when I'm almost doing the same thing on the internet. It is like if Ms. Writing Alone in Your Room had a baby with Mr. Live Via Satellite.

This is a strange phenomena that should be studied by a scientist. The scientist should finance this with the government's money. It will be a waste of money, but less of a waste than most of the other stuff the government spends our money on.

Everything that I write here is a first draft, although I occasionally fix typos and add a few sentences here and there when I forgot things.

Blogging also satisfies me a little when I'm going through a fiction rut like I'm experiencing now. Without a blog, I would go insane.

I need a new project.

I need to stop thinking about needing a new project until after I'm finished with my grad school admissions stuff.

It is very likely that if I had a new project, my grad school admissions stuff would not get done. I turned a twenty two page grad school essay that I wrote on my blog into two pages. I even had a four page limit. I just kept cutting and cutting and cutting.I am hoping to get the other stuff finished lightning fast - maybe within the next couple of weeks.

It is a good thing that I have a blog.