LOOK AT ME (no, don't look at me)

Today, following the popularity of my dashed-out photo essay, I watched the stats to my little blog explode. Suddenly, instead off the thirty of you who read this here navel-gazer there were ten thousand people.

I felt a little bit of vertigo while I stared at the lists of domain names -- among the ubiquitous comcasts and rrs, there were NASAs and Cornells and Harvards and Yales and Princetons. There were government people and media people and people with boring jobs who have time to click on things that make them snicker.

All of a sudden I felt just like an obnoxious little girl who has been jumping around in her favorite ruffled party dress and glittery shiny patent leather maryjanes screaming LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME MOM MOM MOMOMOMOMOMOMOM LOOK! and then, suddenly, a curtain raises and there are ten thousand people looking at you. (Including my mom -- hey mom! -- who thinks everything I write is brilliant. So, like, no pressure there.)

Come to think of it, it's kind of like when Cindy went on that quizbowl show. She was all cocky and braggarty about it until that made-from-cardboard looking camera flashed that red I'M ON light and she totally froze.

Then I went to bed last night and dreamed I was at a party with several Chicago bloggers -- that is, people who have blogs I read but not people I know in person. Which may make this like some kind of psuedo-celebrity dream, or just some sort of subconscious stalking. Erin Lady Byrne invited me to come to dinner with Poundy and Drunken Bee. Mimi Smartypants was there, too. It was a grand time, there were other people there who treated me nicely and I had only slight dreamtime social anxiety about the whole ordeal. I was a little perplexed, though, at their choice of venue, it was a Texas Roadhouse, and there were peanut shells everywhere and we all sat at long, picnic-table-type tables with big mugs o' frosty beer.

I woke up deriding myself for being such a goddamn Internet geek that I would seriously actually have a dream about meeting bloggers.

Even though, like, it would be so dreamy.
Oh, God. I've said too much.