It’s now 4 AM and I’ve done nothing for the past four hours but read all about the hugely big news that I missed last week while I was busy teaching with little free time and less Internet access, namely that Heather Hamilton got fired for her weblog. I would just like to belatedly go on record as saying that that fucking sucks, and I wish Heather all the best in her job search and hope that she finds a better employer who appreciates her incredible writing skills.
I have also read through every single comment posted by all you wankers on MetaFilter, most of whom are busily jumping to conclusions about Heather’s intentions and beliefs and personality, and I would just like to say in no uncertain terms that you can all go to hell. Maybe someday your boss will stumble across your comments on MetaFilter about how you enjoyed shoplifting as a child or how you think drugs should be legalized or some other damn thing. we’ll see how you feel when you’re the one taking it up the ass from a nameless vice-president of your faceless corporation on the tip of some anonymous whistleblower with a grudge.
Also, her fiance flaring his nostrils and setting the MeFi wankers straight. Go, Jon. You and Heather will make a wonderful couple, and you will someday bear children who will grow up and change the world in profound and subtle ways.
Also, re-reading my own archives from last fall when I got fired for my weblog, specifically for posting this very personal essay on addiction, which I have also just re-read. And reliving the emotional rollercoaster that I rode on in the days and weeks immediately after getting fired, including:
- getting 19,000 hits in one day:
I should get fired more often and start selling ad space.
- getting calls from CBS and other talk radio shows:
If I’d known unemployment would be so glamorous, I would have dressed better and set up a webcam.
- losing a dear friend:
Simply put, he doesn’t believe me — he doesn’t believe that I was ever addicted to anything during the time that he’s known me, he doesn’t believe that that’s why I was fired, and, seemingly contradictorily, he doesn’t believe that I’m sober now.
- and finally getting hired by a CEO who read my weblog:
I’d call it good karma, except that karma is supposed to manifest itself over many lifetimes. It’s not like a crash diet; you’re not supposed to see results within 3 weeks.
Also, Michael Barrish’s mantra (”Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker”), which he adopted when he decided to split his personal weblog off from his professional site. “Never considered the other apparent choice: to tone it down. Felt this would destroy it. Felt that if I had to evaluate each thing on the basis of whether it might offend someone, I was fucked.”
Also, this essay on writing and publishing, which I wrote months later, in which I belatedly replied to critics who, on MetaFilter and elsewhere, had suggested that I was a fool to publish such a personal essay and that I should have published it anonymously, or under a pseudonym, or simply written it for my own edification and stuffed it in a drawer somewhere. My response still resonates with me so fully and completely that I need to quote it here at length:
The addicted life is full of secrets. Who knows what, and how much, of which story (which lie). The lies build up, cross and intersect, weave an entire tapestry of bullshit that gets between you and everyone else, no matter how close, no matter how loved. I actually developed entirely new addictions to hide other addictions that I felt specific people would disapprove of. And what brought me down, finally, eventually, utterly, was not the physical exhaustion, not the money, not any of the usual effects you associate with drugs or alcohol, but the sheer expense of keeping track of all my intersecting secrets.
So I got sober. It was not easy, and it was not fun, and I do not recommend my methods to anyone, but they worked for me and they continue to work now, almost two years later. And one of the things that I promised myself after I got sober and stayed sober was that, not only would I someday die sober, but that I would die without any secrets. And I’m a long way from that still, but I’m getting there, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to start making new secrets now out of my no-longer-addicted life.
So Heather, I wish you the best fucking luck you can possibly have, and I hope you find gainful fucking employment soon, and I hope that your old company fucking crashes and burns in your absence.
Motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker.
