On Being Boring and Liking Shitty Things

I’m always being profoundly affected by television. In the episode of Gossip Girl* I was watching the other day, Dan was having trouble writing a story impressive enough for his college application. The esteemed writer with whom he has an internship (this doesn’t even sort of make sense) suggests that all his stories are boring because…his life is boring! Apparently, Dan keeps rehashing the same scenarios over and over in his stories (sounds familiar, writers of Gossip Girl). Dan’s stories are always about a sheltered, introverted, scholarly young man who pursues a super-hot rich girl. SO BORING! (Writers of Gossip Girl, do you even realize what you’re saying?) So anyway, the esteemed tweedy writer suggests that Dan can improve his stories by doing something dangerous in real life. Dan decides that his dangerous activity will be hanging out with a teenage alcoholic. I don’t really understand how this is supposed to broaden someone’s perspective a whole lot, but that’s neither here nor there.

Okay guys, this show is really stupid. It might actually the worst show that I like (excepting Cats 101).  But still, Dan’s problem kind of resonates with me. I am sort of a boring person. I don’t like to take risks, and I enjoy routine. I’ve had profoundly few interesting life experiences, mostly because I actively decline them in favor of watching Cats 101. I mean, I don’t aspire to write the next great American novel or anything, but I do want to write, and I even want to write some fiction, if at all possible. But, could it be that I am too boring to be a writer? 

Let’s further explore this issue by examining the lives of a few great writers of the past** and giving each an excitement rating based on a ten point scale. For clarity, let’s say that a one is the equivalent of watching Cats 101 all day every day, only stopping to eat plain toast made out of white bread, and a ten is the equivalent of sailing around the world on a yacht, steadily gathering a motley crew of zany characters and then finally dying when your Amazonian cave diving expedition goes horribly awry. 

        1. Virginia Woolf

-        Educated at home by wealthy literary parents.

-         Experienced a series of nervous breakdowns thanks to the premature death of her mother.

-         Institutionalized after the death of her father.

-        Became associated with the Bloomsbury group, an assemblage of artists who embraced “a liberal approach to sexuality.”

Excitement Rating: 6

             2.  Ernest Hemingway

-         Drove ambulances on the Italian front during World War I.

-         Worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris.

-         Worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War.

-         “Was present” during the World War II’s Normandy landing and the liberation of France.

-         Almost died in a plane crash while on safari in Africa.

-         Committed suicide in Idaho.

Excitement Rating: 9.5

             3.  Emily Dickinson

-         Went to school.

-         Stopped leaving her house.

-         Exclusively wore white clothes.

-         Refused to answer the door.

-         Enjoyed baking.

Excitement Rating: 2

Special Note: I kind of hate Emily Dickinson.

Findings: Of the three writers examined, only those that I hate scored below 6 on the Excitement Scale.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s look at my life.

             Lea Bridi

-        Went to elementary school. Was bad at everything.

-         Went to junior high and high school. Became an obnoxious perfectionist.

-         Went to college. Mostly watched TV.

-         Went to Europe. Didn’t even get drunk.

-         Worked in an office.

-         Had cats.

Excitement rating: 2-ish

Well, if my excitement rating is a strong indicator, it looks like my writing might end up being pretty terrible. But I know what you’re thinking: “Emily Dickinson may have really sucked, but she is considered a masterful poet. The way she perceived the world made her interesting!”

It seems like this means that as long as I have a unique enough perspective, I can write shitty poetry that will be anthologized in infrequently read American literature books until the end of time, regardless whether or not I choose to enter a hermitage. But the thing is, this is the 21^st century. People no longer tolerate poems about yellow stars and snow and birds. People want to read non-fiction accounts of climbing Mt. Everest. And Bret Easton Ellis.*** Moreover, I’m not even convinced that I have any kind of unique perspective.

Forget it. Someone hand me the remote. I want to see what’s on Animal Planet.

*I know, I know. I should stop watching this show since evidence suggests that it is actually lowering my IQ. But it’s the perfect thing to watch while I’m on the elliptical. I’m now on the second season, and the plot is getting so inane that it’s almost maddening. I definitely need to dedicate an entire post to an analysis of what makes the second season so much worse than the first. But then over 20% of my posts would be about Gossip Girl. How could I sleep at night?

**All information provided by Wikipedia, obviously.

*** Okay, now I understand why Dan thought that drinking with an entitled alcoholic might help him produce popular literature.