ESSAY-AN ESSAY WHOSE SOLE PURPOSE IS TO ALLOW ME TO SAY I WROTE AN ESSAY on March 28, 2018

It is 7:52 PM as I write this, and honestly, you really, really don’t have to read it.

As I’ve written before, I often write an essay or two a day. I really like it when I write more than one, because that means that I can just post an essay the next morning, and not have to worry about keeping to my pledge to post something every day.

I’ve run out of reserve essays, though, and this morning, I didn’t have a chance to write.

This means that it’s now close to the end of the day, and if I don’t post something, I will have to say that I haven’t posted anything today.

In other words: the only reason for this essay’s existence is so that I can say that I posted an essay today.

Look, if you’ve read this far, stop. There’s just not anything good here. There are no ideas. There are no witty turns of phrase.

It’s a vast wasteland. It’s like The Phantom Zone in “Planet of the Apes,” which, as Dr. Zaius reminds us, was a paradise before man made a desert of it.

And right now, this writing is a walk in that desert. This writing, right here, right now, is Charlton Heston pounding his fist into the beach sand with the ruins of the Statue of Liberty in front of him, screaming “damn you all to hell.” Yeah. That’s what this essay is.

Because there’s just nothing here, nothing at all. Nothing but me, just wanting to say that I wrote an essay.

In a way, I feel kind of bad for this essay. If there was a convention of the essays that I’ve written, most of the other essays would get to say that they were there because I wanted to write about my cat or Megan’s dog. Some others could even say they’re there because I wanted to make a political statement of some sort.

Then I imagine this essay sort of looking down at the ground and saying “uh…I’m here because he pledged to post an essay every day, and it was 7:52 PM on March 28, 2018, and he hadn’t written anything. So he wrote me.”

Then I imagine the other essays sort of shying away from this essay, as if he’s a Dungeons and Dragons character with a charisma of, like, four or something.

And I have to admit, I’d get really angry at those other essays for shunning this one. I’d tell them that often, I need to write essays like this just to keep myself sharp, and that if it weren’t essays like this, I probably wouldn’t get around to writing all those other essays.

“I’ll tell you guys something,” I’d say to the other essays, “when I needed to have an essay for March 28th, 2018. this essay was there, okay? I mean, take a look at him: his thesis is ‘Derek wrote this so he’d have something to post on his blog on March 28th.’ Do any of you have the guts to have a thesis so pedestrian?”

I imagine the other essays looking a bit ashamed.

“Well,” I’d say, “do you?”
Silence.
“I thought not,” I’d say. “Let me tell you, this essay, and the essays like him—you know, essays with themes like ‘not having anything to write about,’ ‘staring at a wall and thinking about nothing that will possibly become an essay,’ and, of course, ‘having no idea whatsoever in my head, which means, of course, that my ideas have dried up completely, and that I’m a complete fraud as a writer’—are always there for me. When I’m absolutely bereft of ideas, they’re always there to give me something to write about.”
Look, if you’ve read this far, I know that I’ve wasted your time, and I’m really sorry for that, but I can’t help it…I love this essay. I wrote it just to take up space, but I needed an essay, and this essay was there for me at my desperate time of need.

Thank you, essay that I wrote just to have something to post today…I owe you one.