Said to have been discovered in a Baltimore church cellar in 1692, actually penned in 1927 and cranked out decades later on fake parchment to adorn the bedroom walls of millions of kids like me who came of age in the seventies, Desiderata is a modern junk classic, its bite-sized peace ‘n’ love wisdom wedges one of the last twitches of a sixties generation that had already begun to trade its tie-dyed shirts and cut-offs for leisure suits and MBAs. With bloggers having cut themselves off into their own little world so far they even rate their very own health tips, comes a new Desiderata.
For Bloggers only.
Stumble aimlessly amid the trolls and waste, but remember what peace there be in staring at your toes for a couple of weeks. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all readers. Publish your posts quietly and clearly, and listen to podcasts, even the dull and garbled, for they too have a right to hog bandwidth. Avoid loud and aggressive bloggers. They are pains in the ass.
If you compare your hit count to that of other bloggers, you will become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser counts than yours can muster. Enjoy your favourite posts as well as your drafts. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, for you will probably never make so much as a fucking dime from blogging.
Exercise caution in choosing a provider, for the Internet is full of con artists and thieves. But let this not blind you to the virtues of moving your blog to WordPress.com. Many strive for massive hit counts, and everywhere life is full of miracles. Be yourself. Above all, do not feign knowledge, for readers will not hesitate to tell you that you are full of shit. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all the scrapers, sploggers, and bloggers who never learned the difference between it’s and its and loose and lose, it is perennial as come-ons for Viagra.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in the face of sudden loss of access. But do not distress yourself with thoughts your blog has been deleted permanently. Many fears are born of insomnia and lack of caffeine. Beyond a wholesome wheat toast, eat whatever you like. You are a child of your parents. You have a right to post, and to sometimes state the obvious. And whether or not it is clear to you why or how, no doubt the search engines are making sure that someone looking for porn will land at your blog instead.
Therefore, be at peace with Google, whatever your level of search optimisation may be. And whatever your postings midst the noisy confusion of millions of other bloggers, keep peace with your soul. For all its spam, viruses and broken links, it is still a functional network.
Brush after meals. Strive to post regularly.
© 2007 lettershometoyou
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The banner photograph shows the town of Britannia Beach, BC, Canada, where I grew up. It's home. But I don't live there anymore.
you’re back in fine form!
you don’t post often enough but when you do I always feel it was worth the wait
…and call your mother.
That was GREAT. And suprise, surprise – during the 60′s and 70′s my mum also had a fake parchment copy of the Desiderata tacked up on the wall in the bedroom next to her walk-in closet and we all though “Oooh, 1692! That’s really, really old.!” Little did we know.
Can you believe that I didn’t know what “desiderata” meant? It was one of those terms skulking around in my burlap bag of things people more educated than I know, that I’ll get to one day. Thanks!
Pity that there’s no way to sort out which unknowns would be fundamentally useful for my daily life, and which … will make me feel ignorant for having thought they might be meaningful.
hey I left a comment here yesterday… where did it go?
I love it! Our blog was suspended most of one weekend day recently and I couldn’t figure out if I somehow posted something overtly religious. Didn’t ever find out what happened, but what the hey.
You know, this post does reveal you as something of a literature geek…
Hi everyone…
ybonesy: lit geek!!
Does that include the Hitchhikers Guide?
nurse – glad you have the patience.
christina and Molly – I wonder if you can still pick up an old copy? wait! there’s always eBay.
…-back in a week or so – Ian
I swear I am going to have to print this and plaster it about as wallpaper to surround what will not be my little SACRED space o’ blogging! This is amazing!!
THANKS so much!
woot! another brilliant piece. I’m linking to it.
that is very nice and true!
btw. just returned from hamburg – however do you manage not to freeze to death up there? there was ice on the cars on saturday morning!
I love this blogger’s desiderata. I like this part best: “Keep interested in your own career, however humble, for you will probably never make so much as a fucking dime from blogging.” Sometimes I dream about money pouring into my lap from some imaginary cash machine, and all because I like to write about weird things.
The original of that was done out on puch cards in the 1960′s and found in an abandoned ibm 360 left on a scrap heap to rust, along with a truckload of old refrigerators.
and btw, it’s as f***** brilliant now as it ever was.
Great read for bloggers!
Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
These are really great and made me laugh. Perhaps the bloggers desiderata should be referred to as blogiderata.
I loved it and laughed lots.
I’m so upset.
William Shatner will not be in the next Star trek movie.
But I don’t know what upsets me more — that William Shatner won’t be in it, or that there will BE another Star Trek movie.
Signed,
Spock
PS, can you please forward this to Lanny Anders? I can’t find an address.
Oh, and since I never EVER throw anything away, I probably still have my fake parchment copy rolled up in a tube of maps in the basement somewhere.
I can’t believe that somebody included the word “woot” in a comment. I tried it once in a meeting at work, and I think the echo of the laughter still lingers in the plant.
–Vorpal
Vorpal,
There is so much to the Internet I still have to learn. For example, the English-language forum for expats living in Germany (toytown icon on sidebar) has a profile page for members. I made the serious mistake of clicking on a link to a homepage in one member’s profile. In my disgust at the photo which came up, I even went to the extraordinary length of complaining to the mods about it, but they wrote back: now you know what a lemon party is – where have you been? My answer to that is: You simply can’t know everything there is to know.
Now with this woot thing: I know it’s a leet speak thingy, right? But why would your colleagues find woot such a hoot?
Oh, and thanks for the Lanny Anders question!!! Lanny has been on a real bender lately. I’ll go sober him up.
And to all those who liked the Desiderata: thank you! I have now finished staring at my toes for the past two weeks.
Excellent! Thank you!
and thanks to you as well!
I think I have to steal this. Why haven’t I done so already???
Well.. you COULD link to it in one of your post-thingies, a pull quote or two…
I’m with Rain. This must be spread widely. And be stolen unmercifully. You will know it has become a blogipelago classic when it begins to appear without attribution – - -
“Brush after meals. Strive to post regularly.”
Never a truer word spoken Ian.
Submitted to BoingBoing. This is an instant classic.
Very clever…will have to frame this one.
raincoaster – thanks! but are the boing-boingers listening? I think they’ve all left work by now…
azahar and curtis… will it be printed on parchment one day too?
Fucking brilliant, dude.
Love it.
I’ll be spreading the word soon . . .
Visited via Raincoaster.
~m
Now all you need is for your new version to be read by Leonard Nimoy and you’re good. Nimoy put out three albums long ago (mostly of him singing) and him reading the desiderata was on one of them.
How’s this?
Looks very good! I can hear the paper crinkling.
@renalfailure: maybe he can team up with William Shatner and do a duet. Nooooo….
That was beautiful to read through. Bravo!
Bravo!
Extremely well done. So damn true is so many ways. Glad I was told about you from the Smoke & Mirrors site!
I twiched and shivered, moaned, and screamed.
Another Great Post. I’m really enjoying the reading.
Hello girl – comments like yours are great to wake up to!
Glad to have you around.
Raincoaster prescribed me this post for my blogging illness. Great stuff. It just cheered me up. Thanx!
Oh… Can I quote some and put it on my sidebar?
Hi Yella! I hope it’s the injection you need.
Sure you can quote some and put it in your sidebar. Can you please include a link back to the post?
Of course I can, Ian. And I will. Thanx for the permission, and the desiderada!