WILL BLOG FOR FOOD

How do I get into trouble by blogging? Let me count the ways.

First of all, the usual: Readers don’t always agree with what I say. Or they don’t like getting emails directing them to my site where they can read what they don’t agree with. Or they just don’t like getting these kinds of emails.

But, being me, I get in trouble in new and exciting ways, too.

I sent out an email blast the other night, not realizing that the webmaster was working on the site, which made him wonder what the hell I was thinking. Meanwhile, readers were being sent to an Under Construction site, not to the blog. This is not a good way to win readers and influence the blogsphere.

The most humiliating thing I’ve done was to send a very nasty email — by mistake — to someone who didn’t want to provide names for my mailing list.

I wrote this vile piece of vitriol, in a fit of irrational anger, to another friend, hit the wrong name on my address book — and had one of those “Oh shit, what have I done now!” moments that are all too common in my life . . . 

I did learn from that experience, though.

My blog is not the center of the universe to anyone else but me. Fellow bloggers out there, you know the feeling. Even though you put so much into it, it’s not the job of the entire population of the planet, or even the blogosphere, to follow your site. Or like it, for that matter.

But I feel confident that there’s a bigger message in this. Something about not being so egocentric, thinking more about others, analyzing what you’re really angry about, or whatever, but I’ll leave all that for Dr. Phil and Oprah to sort out.

I also learned to be more careful before I hit “Send.”

And for all you fans of a happy ending, there’s this: my gracious friend forgave me for being such a meathead.

My favorite episode so far relates to a post I wrote recently, The Long Not Summer. In it I say that I’m scaling back a bit these days (who isn’t?) because of the stock market disaster. This innocent comment prompted a call from my financial guy telling me that I shouldn’t worry, I wasn’t in trouble. Which of course made me worry that I was in trouble.

Why would he call? Yes, yes, he follows the blog. But still. Were those annuities really the right thing to do? Should I have bought gold instead? Hid money under the mattress? This paragraph, of course, will get me into trouble with my financial guy, who is just looking out for me and doing his job. (Hi, DJ! I know you’re out there! I can hear you counting the money!)

But suppose that I really were in trouble financially. . . then I’d need a job. A real job.

Which leads me to this: Are there would-be bloggers out there who have something to say, or think they have something to say, but don’t know how to say it? Are they passionate about a hobby,  a cause, their pets, or their children, but are challenged literacy-wise? Do they need someone to do the writing for them?

In other words:
Could I become the world’s first ghost blogger?

If so, how would I get the job? Monster.com? Craigslist? An ad in The Times? Somehow I don’t think I can just stroll into an employment agency and tell them my story.

Maybe I should make up a big sign:

WILL BLOG FOR FOOD!

I could wear it around my neck and walk around the streets of New York looking for customers. This would not only give new meaning to the term “streetwalker,” but probably wouldn’t get me into any more trouble than what I get into already.

My grandmother used to say that you can’t get into trouble by keeping your mouth shut. But she didn’t know about blogging. Or streetwalking . . .

Any stories of the trouble YOU get into you care to  share???