What is The Land of Bizarro

I  have not written anything on this blog in more than five months. And it is not like it was a prolific success before. I created this blog to work as an outlet for my various political and ideological thoughts and frustrations. Like so many of us, I had a bad habit of venting online whenever I read or heard about something that rubbed me the wrong way. This is a sure way to make enemies and alienate people, to say the least. This had to change. I decided to channel this energy to blogging.

Creating a blog was an exciting little project. If I bother to start something, I typically give it my best shot. I wanted to make this blog visually appealing and invested hours into the tiniest of details. While a web designer might find my work of art laughable, if not outright embarrassing, I am quite happy with the result. It is simple and at the same time has little elements—including the goofy fonts—that looks just like me. If my mind were a webpage, it probably would look like this.

"I annoyed my friends with my brouhaha."

What I did not think about beforehand was the theme of this blog. This surely is not my online diary. Nor do I have a political or other agenda that I want to advance. In terms of politics, I am neither part of the Left or Right as I cannot make myself think in tribalistic terms and have a tendency to anger both camps with my incessant contrarian nature. But I think about politics and society a lot and often when a powerful person or institution says or does something foolish, I feel the need to express my views. For years, I annoyed my friends with my brouhaha. Then I created this blog and something interesting happened: My need to write about these things went away.

I have always had a strange relationship with writing. If I do not do it, my mind gets cluttered with toxic thoughts. When I do it, I often enjoy the process, but doing it publicly overwhelms me with being overly focused with the minutiae of editorial concerns, such as minor grammar and punctuation issues, and I rarely am happy with the result. Some say that I am a good writer. I see myself as mediocre at best. But one way or another, I have to write. I have no choice. It has been so for the longest time. That is why it is very unusual to go through a period of not needing to do it.

But happen it did. After writing my piece on the Marvel movie Black Panther, I tried to write another criticizing the excesses and aimlessness of the #MeToo movement. That piece never saw the light of day. For the first time in the longest time, I simply did not care anymore. There was no passion in the words, no spirit in my writing, so I gave up. It wasn’t a writer’s block. It was a writer’s demise. Apathy had taken over.

It has been four months now since I decided to discard the #MeToo post. It has also become more clear to me why I did so and what caused my sudden lack of interest in writing. The answer is simple: There is so much more to life. These are petty issues. Hollywood’s becoming a mouthpiece to Social Justice Warrior propaganda is a petty issue. A few more movies and franchises will be morphed into unwatchable, political garbage, but life goes on. It feels almost comical that I managed to get out only three texts and two of them can be classified as movie reviews that are a bit too serious to be taken seriously. Realizing how foolish my online ravings are killed my passion in writing.

But there is another aspect to this. Writing about these issues is also so much fun. Whenever I have rejoiced in writing, it has been when I have just let go and have not cared about what others think about or even what I will think about it. My big problem in life—and it applies to this blog—has always been excessive perfectionism, my search for the Holy Grail. Either my goals are not good enough or I am not good enough. When I look at my Black Panther post, part of me says that the topic was not worthy of my time and another says that the text is ham-fisted and would have needed more editing. And maybe both statements are true. Time could always be used more productively and there is always a better word, a cleverer way to express oneself. So what?

So what indeed. I have no plans to advertise this blog. Chances are that no one will never read a single post. Even if someone did find value in my work, this blog is unlikely to attract any popularity. As far as the world is concerned, my thoughts, written down or not, will inevitably go forgotten. Anything I say is a mere whisper into emptiness. That is what it will forever be.

This banal realization after a long break has made my passion for writing resurface.

There is something comforting about being so likely to go unnoticed. It liberates. There is no need to worry about the quality of the content and much easier to give the boot to perfectionism when I am doing it for my own joy and not for others. That way I do not approach it as I would my job. In practice, this means that I am likely to produce a lot more content in the future. Perhaps a few words should be dedicated to what this content will be about and what is the purpose of this blog.

So, what is The Land of Bizarro? It is a creative project. It is a hobby. It is something not to be taken too seriously. It is a way for me to pass the time. It is a platform for expressing myself. It is something profoundly imperfect, even cringy at times, but if I enjoy the process and get some thoughts out of my system, it is a worthwhile use of my time. With these words, I am saying goodbye to perfectionism. (To prove my point, I decided not to tinker with the post's title picture too much and post it in its current embarrassing beyond amateurish state.)

The name of the blog originates from Superman comics. The Bizarro World is a strange place where everything resembles the world we live in but is inverted or twisted in ways that make it almost unrecognizable. It is a bizarre, unlikely universe. There are days when I wonder has a cosmic wormhole warped me into this strange land. So much is going on that makes little sense.

"Welcome to The Land of Bizarro."

And that is what this blog is about. I will write about things that I find unfathomable in this world. There is no shortage of that. Potential topics are all too abundant. But while the irrationality of our little planet shall be the overall theme, there will be inevitable digressions from it. What those digressions will be, only time will tell, but I have a feeling that I cannot resist the temptation of not adding some snippets from my personal life (case in point).

While I doubt that anyone will ever read these posts, a word of gratitude just in case is in order. If you are an actual flesh-and-blood human being, taking time from your daily life to read my blog, I want to thank you. Hopefully, my ramblings have the power to enrich your life. To sum up my main points, The Land of Bizarro is and forever will be just a little pet project that exists primarily for my own pleasure, and the readers (if there ever shall be any) should take it as such. That being said, if you like or do not like something you read or see, please leave a comment. A petty hobby or not, I won’t say no to good ideas.

Welcome to The Land of Bizarro.