When I was a freshman at the fine and frustrating Miami University, I decided to write a book about it. I got the feeling everyone else - like myself - was sort of shuffling along waiting for things to become familiar. College can be a lot of fun, but it can also be completely terrifying, and I wanted to write about both for the sake of the next few years’ worth of freshmen.

Although I actually followed through with the writing part, the next few years in the life of “the book” were spent on rewriting, editing, and rewriting some more. I paid some publishers’ association for a list of what type of manuscripts individual publishing houses were currently accepting. I sent out cover letters to every place that looked like a match, and to more than a few random companies with submission info listed online. I heard back from next to no one. If I’m a halfway decent writer, I’m a mostly awful salesman.

So after this and similarly spirit-sapping research into independent publishing, I posted the book on my website and left it at that. Then, after I set this blog up recently, I realized how easy it’d be to copy and paste the entire mess online with each chapter as an entry. Enter stage right underpublished.blogspot.com - In Dependence in what is almost certainly its last revision. Instead of clumsily picking apart and putting back together its contents, from here on out I may post comments, updates, and so on right here at thathero.com. If you’re lucky.

I have a website, which you’ve picked up on if you read my last whiney post or if you knew me during my “hey I think I’ll write about that on my website” phase. The vision for the thing, originally and at most times during its lifespan, has featured reviews about music and movies in an effort to trick hapless surfers into reading my writing. There have been times I’ve thought it’s worthwhile, and times I’ve thought it’s not.

Lately I’ve been leaning more towards the latter. In part, because I know (as I’ve always known) there are not all that many people wandering the internet looking for music and movie recommendations from some random dude. Why bother with my crappy reviews when Rolling Stone, Yahoo!, and every local paper in the country is more than covering the crappy reviews beat? That’s a serious question in terms of whether or not the site is worth my time, especially since the chances are even slimmer that someone will like my music reviews and dig further into what I’ve got online.

Another serious question is “What part of my brain is broken?” Because no matter what big or little change I’m making to a page, I have to change a hundred thousand other things while I’m at it. I finally got around to adding reviews for a couple of Foo Fighters CDs I’ve had for… sheesh, going on a year now. And then when I was finished - I started messing with one of the other reviews. Then I noticed some bad grammar in the one before that. Then I decided to change some other completely unnoticable things. And here we are! Although I might make changes to the way Blogger works, the hands-off-ness of the system is what got me writing here in the first place. If I can type something up and hit a button, it’s a little easier to post without subsequently changing it over and over like a total whack-job nerd genius.

But just a little.

Hours, nay, half-days from now, history will look back upon this entry with the utmost of respectful disinterest.

I’ve always taken the saying “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” with a grain of salt. It’d be pretty cool if I had some compelling reason for this… buuut I don’t. I’m stubborn. That covers it. A motto I’d prefer is “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.” This is not a standard I’ll pretend I adhere to, but at least it gives a more reasonable amount of room. There are plenty of situations when something not-so-nice but extremely important needs to be said. There are lots of times when saying something harsh would be good compared to saying nothing.

Now is not one of those times. Lately I’ve had a lot of papers - ranging from two to thirty eight pages long - to work on for classes. This is always a reminder that as much as I like writing, I hate writing when I don’t get to pick the subject, length, and format. Hate it. Usually, having to write something I don’t care about makes me want to write something I do care about, but that’s not the case right now. So what am I writing for, you might ask.

Nothing. I’m realizing that my motivations for writing are often negative ones. Something I read online was so idiotic that I needed to put in my two cents. An article in The Miami Student was too assinine to ignore. But as I start to reflect more on graduating, counting the days to unemployment, and not wasting my life, I wonder if anything I’ve written has been worth more than what I intended to counter.

I can’t say. I can’t say, which sucks quite a bit considering the time and effort I’ve put into writing over the past several years. Words of encouragement from the right mouths go an incredibly long way, but have they actually been more than words? Have I encouraged or brightened the days of people I care about, or are said people just too sweet to tell me I’m boring?

It’s quite the thing to wrestle with. Maybe in a few days or weeks or months something will work me up sufficiently to make me stop wondering. I sort of hope not. We hear more than enough stupid things from stupid people; I’d like to never write again if I’m one of those people. As far as current events and politics go, some good news: a Rabbi punched a Nazi in the face in Kansas City. I’m sorry, but that’s excellent. Unless you’re the Nazi, in which case you sucked to begin with and deserve some slapping around.

I know you’re all wondering, as the millions of fans of any famous person would, what exactly is going on here. Several entries to the journal in as many days… a lack of updates to the rest of the site - which, by now, is probably less than surprising. Am I turning into a blogger? Am I leaving behind my simple roots as a movie reviewer/CD reviewer/mediocre essay and poetry writer for the people? The answer to the first question would be, “no, not really.” Actually, that would probably be the answer to the second question, too, if I were to bother responding to such a dumb question.

I’ve been trying to find a “job.” Fellow college students, perhaps you, too, have heard of this fabled item. From what I gather, it’s something that takes about 8 hours out of 5 days of every week for the rest of your life (more, if you pick the wrong kind of “job”). In return you get money to buy a new car when you feel like it, and you don’t have to become a penniless wino or continue going to school forever (to be honest, I’m not sure which would be worse).

So, anyway, spring break is next week and graduation is two months from yesterday. If you happen to own a company in Columbus that is looking to pay a new MIS graduate around $30 grand a year for doing stuff, be sure to let me know. Or if you wield control over someone who owns a company in Columbus that is looking to pay $30 grand a year for new-MIS-graduate stuff, well, wield ‘em my direction. I’d especially like to work for The Ohio State University, because they are cool and I could get discounted football tickets, so if you’re a big donor or the president’s niece or something, put in the good word. Thanks.

Until then, the site will continue to be the tangled up ball of goofiness you’ll expect if you’ve read anything here before. Hopefully I will find new and interesting things to say and do. More hopefully, I will stop saying and doing things that are not new or interesting. We’ll see how that goes.