Thanks for the Material, Asshole

The danger of being a doer, the danger of getting things done, creating shit, producing content, and putting it out into the world, is that everybody has a fucking mouth.

And since the internet was invented, everybody has fucking balls.

Little spineless fucks who wouldn't say shit to you in a face-to-face conversation suddenly discover reservoirs of unimaginable courage when they're safely tucked behind the anonymity of a screen name like as_907_.

And let me just throw this out there: I'm fucking Gen X.

I grew up in a time when running your fucking mouth carried consequences. Sometimes those consequences involved getting popped in the fucking mouth. That wasn't necessarily a particularly enlightened system of conflict resolution, but it did create a certain amount of consideration before opening your fucking yap.

You had to look at the person.

They could look back.

You had to decide whether whatever clever fucking thing had just entered your brain was worth actually saying out loud.

Sometimes you decided it wasn't.

And sometimes you said it anyway, got popped in the fucking teeth, shook your head afterward, and thought, Yeah, I probably had that fucking coming.

Then the internet happened.

Suddenly, scrawny little punks discovered courage in anonymity. They found strength in the shroud. They discovered loud, boisterous voices beneath the cloak of invisibility offered by virtual interaction.

And if you create something and put it on the internet, eventually you attract these fuckers.

They don't create anything themselves. They don't contribute anything to the conversation. They don't offer an idea or an argument or something they've dragged out of their own fucking soul and placed in front of strangers to be judged.

They just throw rocks at the people who do.

I posted a video the other day promoting one of my blogs. This is the marketing side of being a writer that I'm slowly learning to embrace. If I want to move from being an unknown author to an author people actually fucking know, I have to put myself out there. I have to market my voice, my words, my books, and my material.

It's part of the fucking job.

I don't know how successful I'll ultimately be. But I know I'm going to keep doing the fucking work and find out.

So I made the video.

I posted it.

And then it happened.

Some cheesedick scumbag decided this was his moment.

He clearly hadn't read the blog I was promoting. He didn't comment on the idea. Didn't challenge something I'd written. Didn't offer some competing thought that might actually generate an interesting fucking conversation.

Nope.

He went after my teeth.

“Do you floss with a mattress?”

There it was.

The intellectual contribution of as_907_ to human civilization.

And here's the funny fucking thing: Had he actually read the blog I was promoting, he might have liked it. Maybe he would've clicked another one. And another. Maybe somewhere in all that reading, he would've stumbled across the things I've written about the motorcycle crash.

Then maybe he'd have started piecing together the story.

Maybe he'd have learned that I've spent almost a fucking year putting my body and my life back together after being run down by a Subaru. Maybe he'd have learned about the broken bones, the surgeries, the injuries, and all the pieces of myself I've slowly been assembling again.

And maybe somewhere along the way he'd have learned about the fucking tooth.

Because yeah, dude.

I know.

I've got a fucked-up front tooth.

Thank you for bringing this previously undiscovered development to my attention.

It's one of the remaining pieces from the crash. Fixing it requires a bone graft and thousands of dollars out of my own fucking pocket, even after insurance. It's another item on the long list of things I'm still dealing with almost a year after somebody nearly killed me.

So no, as_907_, I don't floss with a fucking mattress.

But I do floss.

I brush too.

I even wash my fucking asshole every once in a while. Want to hear about that next?

Here's what I really want you to know, though.

I've crawled back from actual death three fucking times.

I've put myself back together after being run down by a fucking Subaru.

I've learned to walk through pain that would've once terrified me. I've gone back to work. I've gone back to riding. I've written books. I've written stories. I've put pieces of myself on the internet knowing full fucking well that strangers were going to judge them.

And, yeah, I still have a fucking tooth to deal with.

You got me.

Congratulations.

But if you were shooting for clever with your idiotic little comment, you fell tragically fucking short.

Keep trying, though.

That's how we get better.

Practice makes perfect, and if we're living right, failure opens the door to success.

I fucking believe in you, as_907_.

Because here's the beautiful part you probably didn't anticipate when you decided to throw your little rock at me: I'm a fucking writer.

You gave me material.

You spent thirty seconds trying to make a stranger feel shitty about something she survived, and I turned you into a fucking blog post.

I'll publish it.

I'll promote it.

People will read it.

Some of them will laugh.

And then I'll move on and write the next fucking thing while you wander around the internet looking for another stranger whose appearance you can criticize from behind your clever little screen name.

That's the danger of fucking with a writer.

Sometimes you don't hurt her feelings.

Sometimes you just give her an ending.

Oh, and thanks for fucking reading.