Ode to the Radio Personality

Sometimes it's the person who gives you the news and chats with you first thing in the morning.  You've just been ripped awake and haven't had your coffee or your breakfast yet.  You're so fragile, and this person is able to help ease your way to wakefulness and help you get to work instead of climbing back into bed or driving your car off a bridge.

Sometimes it's the people who help you unwind on your drive home, telling you jokes and playing some tunes and allowing you to decompress after a long day of work.  Your coworkers were annoying, your project is behind schedule, your client hates you, traffic is so jammed that you might never make it home, but it's okay because the deejays are funny and the music is just what you needed.

Sometimes it's the person chatting you to sleep late at night, helping you to feel less alone.  Whether it's with stories of other people's sad love lives or calls about space aliens, you know that you're doing better than somebody.

I enjoy listening to the radio.  I love discovering new pop songs (and then wishing they would please, please stop playing them).  I like hearing the news in thirty seconds.  I especially like radio personalities.  They become like amusing friends who don't expect much out of me.  Sure, they try to sell me stuff, but so have some of my real friends.

So it makes me incredibly sad when they disappear.  Radio personalities, unlike other public figures, will be let go without notice and without any announcement to their listeners.  Over the years there have been so many times when I turned on my radio expecting to hear the same person I've been hearing for years, and it's different.  And different is not what I'm looking for.

The result is one of three things:

• Music!  Lots of music!  We're better than all those other stations because we play hours and hours of non-stop music! Why?  Because in the interests of cost-cutting we fired all of our deejays and lost all our sponsorships, but we're not going to tell you that.  We've just changed our format to be more music for you, the listener, because we love you!
• Hi, I'm a new voice from somewhere back east.  I know absolutely nothing about the Portland Metro area, and I'm laughing at my own jokes because they've got me all alone in this room, but I'm going to do my very best because they cut my show that I used to do back east where people knew me and loved me. 
• Syndicated show from Los Angeles.  You are getting the same canned entertainment that is being played on 800 other stations around the country.  Hope you didn't want any local news.  Hope there aren't any local emergencies.  

Regardless, there's absolutely no mention of what happened to the people the radio station has been using as the face of their product for the last few years.  They're just gone.  They've stopped existing.  And in this age of one company owning a huge chunk of the airwaves, it's hard to get anyone to admit anything even changed.  

Lately there have been some "changes" taking place at a local radio station.  I just heard about yet another radio personality who is joining all the others who have been shown the door over the last few weeks.  I know nothing about why or how because no one is allowed to talk.   

None of them will probably ever read this blog post, but I still want to say that when these people disappear from the airwaves, I notice.  I enjoyed listening, I miss them, and I wish them well, wherever they might land.

Where Have You Been, Young Lady?

My father-in-law has been getting on my case for not blogging recently.  He's right that I have not blogged at all this year.  I started to a few times, but then I . . . didn't.

So for Woody and my other five followers here is my list of excuses for why I have not been blogging in 2013:

I did not make a resolution in 2013 to blog.  

I'm very big on goal setting as a way to accomplish things, and without a specified goal I tend to not do anything at all.  You want to know what I did resolve to do in 2013?  I resolved not to dye my hair, figuring that was an easy one that I could succeed at.  It's kind of like writing "brush teeth" on my to do list in the morning, sometimes even if I already have.  It's important to have a sense of accomplishment.

I was discouraged by the lingering divisiveness from the 2012 election.  

I'm not actually kidding about this.  All the venomous political chatter makes me want to abandon social media and live in a hobbit hole somewhere.  I'd written an additional post on the topic, and Jacob told me it just made me sound like a judgmental jerk.  There's already enough of that out there, so I deleted it.

I actually have a day job.

One of my 2013 resolutions was to put a little more of my time and mental energy into my work.  With all the health issues of the last few years, my job had taken a back burner, but those excuses are fading.  I figured I'd actually work kind of like a normal person for a change.

I didn't feel well.

I don't get to eat any of this.

Despite having put some health issues behind me (pun intended, for those who know what I was dealing with), I've been sick this year.  I was sick enough to pursue alternative medicine, something I've been skeptical of.  The good news is that I got some answers and am feeling better.  The bad news is I can't eat any of the foods that make life worth living.  

Am I going to be blogging again now?  I originally blogged to give myself some writing practice.  I stuck with it because of my new year's resolution.

So here are questions for you, my readers (all five of you) that have encouraged me to continue:

1. Why should I blog?  I'm not going to do it as a sad ploy for attention.
2. What on earth is my blog about?  Is it a humor blog?  Telling myself my goal is to be funny sounds like the fastest way to never write another funny thing ever.  

So let me know what you think, and I might just write more than one post in 2013.