Writing About Yourself in the Third Person

Writing About Yourself in the Third Person, or How I Got Hired to Blog (or really, just post links and write blurbs about them).

Through a strange twist of events (the way so many things seem to happen these days), I have somehow landed myself a gig writing a weekly column for the Make Magazine blog about stuff from Japan. As part of my introduction to the readership, I had to write a little blurb about myself in the third person. If you've ever had to do this, then you know how weird this can be. What do you really say about yourself? Who cares, right? In addition to trying to make myself seem qualified to write this column, I had to try to make it interesting and to have a sense of humility. I've subscribed to their blog for a while now, and I have seen other new writer introductions (obviously written by the people themselves, and with even weirder pictures than mine, if you can believe that), and I tried to remind myself that IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER. Nobody really cares, in the grand scheme of things. It's hard to remember that sometimes, ya know.

Anyway, so my column is called "Made in Japan," and I do a weekly showcase of links to interesting DIY projects from Japan. In a way, it's a dream job, because it combines things that I am already interested in, it doesn't involved actually going anywhere to do the work, and it hopefully won't take up too much time. Plus, it's kind of fun. I have been a subscriber to the paper version of Make for a while now, and I can honestly say that I anticipate every issue as if it was a tasty meal.* It is a fun day when I see it in the mailbox. The only other magazine that I think I would be more honored to work for would be Arthur, but I don't really have any skills that I could offer them, since I don't know any shamans, and I only own like four noise tapes. It would also be cool to do something maybe for Wired, or Modern Drummer. Those would be cool too.

So there ya go, here's the introduction, and here's the first installment. Check it.

P.S. Am I doomed because I used an emoticon in my first post? Hmmmmm.

*The phrase "looking forward to ____ as if it were a tasty meal" comes from Ben Bussell, who I'm told used that phrase to describe how much he looked forward to going to Andy Hollinden's class "The Music of Frank Zappa" at Indiana University. I also took this class from the legendary Andy Hollinden, and I think the tasty meal analogy is pretty much right on. But... what if the meal consisted of a Burnt Weenie Sandwich. That's the name of a Zappa album. Weird, huh?