{"id":16418,"date":"2010-01-27T17:15:24","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T01:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=16418"},"modified":"2010-01-27T17:29:02","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T01:29:02","slug":"blogging-as-self-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=16418","title":{"rendered":"Blogging As Self-Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve created this elaborate blogging empire because I can&#8217;t stand feeling vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>I remember as a kid not getting invited to birthday parties. I remember the big kids dunking me under water and holding my head there for about ten seconds. <\/p>\n<p>I hated that!<\/p>\n<p>I vowed that I would grow and find ways to defend myself.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to find a way to penetrate any gathering. In eighth grade, I realized that journalism was my perfect entre into society. It was my press pass to life. I could penetrate any world, from pornography to Orthodox Judaism, by saying I was a writer.<\/p>\n<p>Brilliant!<\/p>\n<p>I tend to be uncomfortable in a crowd unless I&#8217;m a journalist or a photographer. Then I can be in the mix but keep a professional distance.<\/p>\n<p>I hate the anxiety of wanting to be with people who don&#8217;t want to be with me. As a writer, I can penetrate anything and say it is for my craft. I&#8217;ve created a vehicle to get into places where people don&#8217;t want me. My work is powerful enough that a lot of people who don&#8217;t like me realize it is easier just to deal with me directly rather than to deal with my fury online. I get press passes. I get important people talking to me. I feel, at times, like an insider.<\/p>\n<p>I know you&#8217;re not going to invite me to your party. So I&#8217;m going to say I&#8217;m a writer and I&#8217;ll talk to people who went to your party and then I&#8217;ll critique your party on my blog and I&#8217;ll feel a part of your party and superior to your party and I&#8217;ll feel better about my loneliness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve created this elaborate blogging empire because I can&#8217;t stand feeling vulnerable. I remember as a kid not getting invited to birthday parties. I remember the big kids dunking me under water and holding my head there for about ten &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=16418\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[21185,2683,5096,1132,21186,10777],"class_list":["post-16418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-birthday-parties","tag-eighth-grade","tag-loneliness","tag-orthodox-judaism","tag-self-defense","tag-ten-seconds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16424,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16418\/revisions\/16424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}