Friends Don’t Let Friends Write Drunk

I have to admit to being somewhat embarrassed.

I don’t make it a habit of writing while drunk. Not that I make any judgements about Hemingway or anything, but I tend to take my own writing too seriously to do while drunk– or even mildly tipsy. So I stay away from it.

Now, first off, let me say that I’m not fooling myself. I write in a blog… that about 4 people read… only when they are bored at work… and have already read everything else. Just because I take it seriously doesn’t have to mean that I think I’m particularly good at it. I’m okay with who I am.

(or is it whom?)

But when I’m tipsy, I’m a bit too forward, a bit too direct, and I tend not to rely on my own wit as much as inside jokes and things that I heard on This American Life. I tend not to proof-read and edit, and cull, and modify.

It’s just, well, not good enough.

As an analogy: When I write, I like to pretend that I’m someone like David Sedaris. When I write while drunk, I tend to write as if I’m someone in David Sedaris’ family. You know, one of the crazy ones.

The problem is that my homemade, bone-dry, hard cider is really easy to drink. And sometimes I’m up late working and have a few glasses as if it were water. Usually it hits me and I say “Why am I up so late drinking cider as if it were water?” and I go to bed.

Last night, instead of going to bed, I tried to tell a funny, heart-warming story.

See, that’s why I don’t write while drunk. Because funny and heart-warming tends to dissolve. My wit becomes a string of inside jokes and stolen anecdotes from other people’s lives. That’s what’s embarrasing.

Re-reading that post about Facebook and my previous job is embarrassing not because of what I said- I like to write comedy, so I would’ve said that basic thing anyway. It’s embarrassing because of how I said it.

That thing about “peeing on my office floor,” and “stepping on my boss’ throat?” That’s totally stolen from an episode of This American Life. In fact, it’s episode #37! That’s not wit, that’s plagiarism. That’s theft.

That thing about clubbing baby seals? That was stolen from a Playboy magazine that I snuck out of my mother’s room when I was about 15. Seriously. Don’t ask me why I remember. I needed a “bad workplace” joke and pulled one from the dusty file drawer of “bad workplace jokes stolen from other people.”

That’s why I’m embarrassed. Not because I said anything- I’m adult enough to live with what I say and do. I’m embarrassed because I said it without any subtlety, I said it with stolen anecdotes.

In short, I didn’t say it well enough.

When I read that post this morning, it doesn’t make me laugh. It doesn’t read funny. Instead, it reads snarky and somewhat angry. I could have– should have– done better than that.

That is why friends shouldn’t let friends write drunk.

I feel like I should apologize to anyone who had to read that.

But who the hell am I kidding? No-one would read that long-ass, unfunny diatribe anyway.

No Comment