“Lighten Up, Francis”
Remember early 80’s comedy movie “Stripes” starring Bill Murray? If you do, you remember the scene where Sgt. Hulka is getting to know the troops and he gets around to the psycho guy who tells all the other guys “…if any of you guys touch my stuff I’ll kill you”…or something to that affect.
To that Sgt. Hulka responds: “Lighten Up, Francis”.
Well, over the weekend I caught up with old friends in LA who where excited to tell me that they’ve come across my blog, but after reading several posts they had some real strong feedback. Simply put, they didn’t think the blog really represented me or my personality. My friend Brooke (who is a college writing teacher) said I should just be myself. Basically, what they were saying was “lighten up, Francis”.
Ok, being myself and really cutting loose could get me fired…or beaten up by somebody whom I might offend. After all, whatever I write about is out there for the world to see and use against me in the court of life.
So, what to do?
Well, my friends’ comments made me take a step back to think about the reason I have been blogging for the past few months and made me give some thought to how I might be able to heed their advice as I write about some not-so-funny topics.
First off, I will try to be myself more in all of my posts — I’ll try to find my resident humor (including that special elixir of sarcasm) in what I write about. To the extent I offend or piss anyone off, please know that there is no malicious intent — just trying to be myself!
Second, I will stick with the topics that I have laid out on the blog today — I will reserve the right to add new topics in the future. One of the more challenging aspects of blogging is the fact that it is difficult to use it as a medium to discuss multiple topics. It’s really suited for focusing on a single topic — but that doesn’t work for me. I have a few topics through which I’d like to contribute to the broader conversation around and I’m not going to run multiple blogs to do that.
Finally, I do really appreciate the feedback from my LA friends. In reading some of my posts, I do agree that they read to me a bit more serious than I really am in person. I certainly don’t aspire to be the next William F. Buckley (though I have thought about donning an ascot and a smoking jacket from time to time). That said, it’s much easier to express your true personality in person than via the written word, but this will be a good, creative challenge: coupling some serious topic commentary with a lighter, more humorous bent.
Anyway, as with my LA friends, please feel free to drop me a note if you think I take the “…lighten up, Francis…” mantra a bit too far.
