Greetings my fellow blogging friends, today I have some disappointing news I need to share with you. After a few days of deliberation I have decided to shut down the Brown Road Chronicles. This has been a terribly difficult decision as I am extremely proud of the stature this blog has grown to and the number of loyal, dedicated readers I have found. The upkeep of the blog, however, the obsession with posting and with statistics and hits and comments… well, frankly it has begun to take over my life and I have decided that something has to give. Until recently I thought I was managing this other part of my life, this newfound hobby, with balance and parity, but alas, two evenings ago it all came to a head when my daughter said to me, “Dad you haven’t spoken to me in over three weeks”. I knew at that moment that something in my life was amiss. My wife followed up with “Steve, we haven’t had sex since December when you started writing this blog.” Seriously, she said that right in front of the children. At that moment I became horribly concerned. Not that we weren’t having sex… the blog had replaced my need for sex… but that my children suddenly knew that their parents… well… had sex. I could only imagine the trauma and damage that had been done to their frail, innocent minds… and it was all because I had started this blog. “Honey”, I said, “uh, maybe this isn’t the right time.” She just glared at me with piercing eyes that hadn’t had sex since December.
The problem was capped off yesterday morning when I received a voice mail from my dentist at 7:45 in the morning. I was driving to work and I had chosen not to answer the call as I was busily reading one of my favorite blogs on my blackberry, glancing up and down every few moments, from blackberry screen to the highway, and from highway to blackberry screen. At work, when I finally had a moment to listen to my voice mails I heard this message… “Hi Steve, we’re just calling because we had you scheduled for a 7:30 a.m. appointment this morning, and its 7:45 now. We just wanted to be sure that everything was okay.” Damn… after close to seventeen years of seeing the same dentist, I had missed my first appointment. I could only blame it on my all-consuming obsession with my blog. After listening to the voicemail I slammed my phone down on the desk and my teeth suddenly felt dirty. Had I not been blogging so much I would have made it to the appointment, they would have scraped all that tartar sauce stuff off of my teeth and shined them up like the chrome bumpers on a classic Ford Mustang. Now they were just dirty and coffee stained… like dirty, coffee stained prostitute teeth. I was ashamed.
After putting in a full day of work, I sat down last evening with a glass of wine to evaluate this situation. No, admittedly it wasn’t just a glass, it was a bottle… alright, it wasn’t just a bottle… it was a box, yeah that’s right, a fucking box of cheap, shitty wine… and I was prepared to pound it all down… that’s right, the whole box… four bottles worth. All that, even with the knowledge that I had been drinking too much lately, the stress of writing and trying to brainstorm interesting and funny post ideas and tweeting all-day for blog hits and the constant marketing of the Chronicles had become overwhelming to me and I was calming my nerves… self-medicating as they say… with the booze… and too much of it. I realized I had become burned-out with the responsibility… the delusional dream… of becoming a successful blogger… and I’ll be frank here… I was tired of pretending to give a rat’s ass that this person’s kid took a shit on the floor the other day or that person broke up with their psycho boyfriend or girlfriend or what the fuck everyone ate for dinner last night. I now understood that I was leaving extraneous comments on stranger’s blogs with the irrational hope that it might generate some hits for me, like a crack-whore giving herself up so that she may get a hit of drug to get her through the next few hours!
There I sat, getting drunk and wondering how I was going to deal with this situation. It had reached crisis levels and I knew something had to give. It couldn’t be my family, it couldn’t be my stable, well-paying job and it definitely couldn’t be my dentist. So, when I had finally drained the enema-style bag of wine that was inside my wine box, I decided that unfortunately the Chronicles is what I had to give up. I cried with the realization that it was over… then I puked… then I cried some more. But it was an epiphany and today I have a new lease on life. I hope you understand the dilemma I was facing and forgive me for no longer providing you with such profound, stimulating, thought-provoking works of writing. I know you will miss me, but rest assured that I have made this decision with only the best interests of my family and myself and my sex-life and my dentist in mind. I want to close by saying thank you to all of my readers for your awesome support the last several months… for reading my posts and for leaving your comments, even if those comments were only your lame attempts at getting me to return to your blog and read your posts… you dirty crack-whores!
Sayonara, my friends!
Steve
Alright, yeah you probably figured out early on… I just made all that stuff up… well, except the dentist part… I actually did miss my dentist appointment. And of course I love reading all your blogs… seriously… I’m not just ass-kissing… and give up the Chronicles? NO WAY… I’m much too obsessed to do that!
Happy April Fools Day!!!
The Brown Road Chronicles 
Oh you dirty dog…I was reading that shit with chills…thinking about how much I was gonna miss reading your stuff! Sure glad it was a joke! Man, you kill me!
You should know me better by now! 🙂
Yea, but I had even forgotten that it was April Fool’s Day when I was reading this. Plus, all the stuff you had in there…I could see some spouses’ saying…LOL
Is there not a button for “Don’t like” this? lol
bwhahahahaha!!! LOVED IT!!! Almost got me (too many bloggers have recently decided to split 😦 ) but I guessed you we’re pulling our legs and I was just grinning whilst reading the rest of your post. Well done on almost getting me 😉 (and I’m glad you are sticking around 😀 )
It will take a lot more than a missed appointment to get rid of me!
out-fucking-standing.
Thanks, when’s the write on project theme on swearing? 🙂
GREAT idea. That’s definitely going up there. I’ll pencil you in.
I KNEW it was an April Fool’s Day joke! You’re seriously afflicted with “BOOBS”, just like the rest of us! I wrote this post after the second time I was FP’d, and people took it seriously:
http://writerwoman61.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/stale-and-wrinkled/
Really happy you’re sticking around, Steve! Seriously, man…set a Date Night with your wife!
Wendy
Yeah BOOBS and date nights go hand in hand… or something like that!
i was taken 😦 but you should have sex with the miss’es and talk to the kids 🙂
at the same time??
I knew you wouldn’t really turn your back on total strangers who come here and spend their precious free time reading about your wandering goats.
Never!! 🙂
Whew! Thought we were going to lose you for a while there! Sorry but you are stuck in blogging hell with the rest of us.
P.S. Blogging is never better than sex.
but it comes a close second for us oldies
Yeah I’m sticking around and as for your PS… I’ll second that!
Hahahahahha…that was awesome!!
Thanks, it was the toned down version too!
Happy April Fool’s Day to you as well!
Hahaha loved it!! Obviously you were reading my blog and missed your appointment – sorry man 😉
Saw your tweet yesterday. Read Broadside Blog, her name is Caitlyn Kelly. She writes for the NY times and is a published author. She has excellent tips on getting an agent and doing book promotion. She is on wordpress- sorry I dont have a handy link, I’m on my phone.
Cheers!
Thanks I’ll check out the site.
Wow, thank you all for the nice comments. Its been a record day for hits, not really sure why?? I didn’t really think I’d trick anybody at least after the first paragraph. It was a fun post though. Hope none of you had any seriously dirty tricks pulled on you for april fools day! Oh well, I guess tomorrow is back to writing about serious stuff… lol!!
I had a super awesome day on my blog on the first too.. 🙂 Mind you I had porn in the title..that usually does it !!
It was a record day because you sppoke about sex!!! Haha. Loved it.
For your wife’s sake- I hope the sex bit was not true.
Xx
Damn! You had almost had me right through except for ONE small detail. I can NO WAY imagine you going without sex since December. Sorry, that just did not ring true: if it turned out to be true I wouldn’t have read your blog any more anyway!
D&B is as bad as D&D – and over here we have highway signboards that say “If you drink and drive you are a bloody idiot”. And it is April 2 here, so that is the truth!
I must be stupid. I keep falling for your shit. 🙂
Gee, you really had me going! 😉
I realized it was a joke when you started saying family was more important than blogging statistics. Of course we have to say this to our family, but all bloggers know this isn’t true.
Leave it to me to first read this in July..lol..
It’s never too late!
Pingback: Excuses, Excuses! | The Brown Road Chronicles