The curses and benefits of obscurity

I know one is not supposed to say these sorts of things, but I've made it a policy not to hold back: Lately I've been writing really good blog posts. For a week or so I was running behind and writing close up to my self imposed deadline, and running late always makes it harder to get that satisfied feeling. It makes it hard to test things out obsessively. Yes, usually I test these out obsessively,. The antique, cracked paint, rusted quality is produced only by careful layering and distressing even if to the general Internet it looks like I fell on my keyboard. Suckers. But then, over the course of two or three days I was keen to get out ahead on my posts for a five day vacation. Oh, I'm not going anywhere, I was just sort of hoping to loll about reading on the couch with my wife without any distractions. So I wrote a lot. It went well. I kept getting this feeling. I don't know how to explain the feeling. It's triumphant and oddly humble. Confident, even if just for a moment, it says "Yes, I got that little tiny piece of magic I made out of nothing, and there it is."

So I wrote like six posts like ringers, the horseshoes piling up, and having just finished up some short, ridiculous and perfect essay, I thought "There is nothing different between how I feel now and how, say, the Rolling Stones felt when they finished Satisfaction." 

The difference only came later when they made 40 million dollars from it and had to sing it thousands of more times to astonishing adulation and increasing levels of desperate weariness.

I got nothing more from my success than the satisfaction, but I'll probably read it again to myself a few times in the years to come with unpredictable results.