Dear Tara:

As you are my only reader, I will be writing my posts exclusively to you from now on. If anyone happens to stumble upon this blog, we’ll both stop talking and look up at them with a sort of exasperated impatience and say (in creepy unison, I guess), “Uh, can we help you?” Then we’ll flip our hairs and go back to whispering to each other behind our hands, a la kindergarten recess.

Just kidding — I am feigning exclusivity to mask the humiliation of continued unpopularity. Only three people have read my blog this week? Duh! That’s how I planned it, suckas! All of this — the low readership, the zero likes, the unseen posts — it’s all been carefully orchestrated! I am the Heisenberg of Midwest Blogs.

“I AM THE ONE WHO POSTS.”

(Been watching Breaking Bad. It’s the first show since Sesame Street that I’ve watched in real time, as it airs, and I’m sort of enjoying the feeling of being plugged into the popular culture, of being able to scroll down my newsfeed and click LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE on all the statuses that refer cryptically to the most recent episode because I, for once, get it. At last I belong to a community! Never mind that it is a community comprised of faceless, nameless, non-interactive, and otherwise dissimilar people, people who won’t hold me at night or buy me a juice when I’ve had a bad day — I am a card-holding member. Want to talk about Hank? Okay, yes, I am able to do that!)

Well, obviously I messed up with the post-a-day thing. Mostly I’ve just been really busy with the task of accepting and trying to understand the fact that my life is completely average and when I die no one will remember me except for a small group of people who sort of knew me while I was alive, and that once they die, I’m just gone.

You know, the usual.

An image from the Wikipedia entry entitled “Ghosts.”

Having grown up in an old farmhouse that was either haunted or possessed of extremely faulty wiring, I’ve always loved ghost stories. And now Ghost Story Season is upon us (a.k.a Candy Corn Season, Jack-o-Lantern Season, Spiked Cider Season), a time when I like to force all of my friends to get in creepy moods and occasionally turn out the lights and tell stories with a flashlight. (“But, ugh, I want to, like, drink at the bars instead, Ingrid!” “Well, we CAN’T go to the goddamn bars because I made a RESOLUTION, alright?! Now turn off the goddamn lights and tell me the one about the hitchhiker.”) I think I’m going to write either one longer story or several shorter stories and publish them in a small, cheapie (read: no color, low production value, extremely poor art) zine and distribute them anonymously around town so everyone’s like, “Oooh, who anonymously published these creepy stories with chilling illustrations? Mysterious! It makes me momentarily forget that my life is completely average and when I die no one will remember me except for a small group of people who sort of knew me while I was alive, and that once those people die, I’m just gone!”

So if I post less around here, and if anyone besides Tara happens to notice, that is why.

Off to make Lentil Loaf.