You don't like poetry, do you?

So here's the thing.

One of the things I have found interesting about starting this blog is that suddenly you become very nervous. Are people reading the blog? Or am I just spending hours writing posts that are just ignored? If people are reading the blog, are they interested? Do they enjoy reading what I say? Or do they mock me behind my back over things I wrote? (I will confess that there is one post that I wrote, posted, revisited the next day, decided I wasn't happy with it and entirely rewrote from scratch, revisited the following day to write from scratch the third version of that post - I'm still tempted just to entirely delete that post everytime I see it, just because I'm completely mortified by it and hate to think what others think about it.)

Anyway, I never would have expected to have this reaction, but I did. The need for approval is apparently very strong, and the thought that I'm wasting my time, or worse, holding myself up for public ridicule (except when I openly invite it), terrifies me.

Which I think is why the Basic Instructions comic below appeals to me. Mostly because I sympathise with the poetry-writing friend nervously asking whether Scott had visited the website. (Click on the comic to see the larger version that should actually be possible to read.)

Incidentally, I'm a big fan of the Basic Instructions strip. I came across it last year, after Scott Adams (the guy behind Dilbert) talked a lot about the strip on his blog. You can generally rely on it to be very funny - especially since each strip contains four seperate jokes, the odds of some joke succeeding are greatly increased. One of the things I find interesting about the strip is that a lot of it is apparently true - the main character is actually Scott, the writer of the strip. The wife, the friend, and the various other characters are apparently all representations of the real people. For example, in this strip, apparently that particular friend actually does have a website where he publishes his poetry. I can't help feeling like this appropriation of people he knows is a bit cruel, but in a fun way. And at least he gives his friends a right of reply. Anyway, it's a good strip, and worth checking out.