Friday, February 23, 2007

What the fuck do I do now?

This is the very first Toine Blog. Most of the people who will end up reading this will be friends of mine who already know everything about me. To those who don't however, allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Toine. Not really, it's actually Antoine, but I always found that to be far too serious a name for me, and so those in the know call me Toine. I am 23 years old, fresh out of University after having (mostly successfully) studied accounting for the past three-ish years. I come from a blue collar family, so it was very important for me to get my education. I'm certain a lot of people out there understand where I'm coming from. You were told your whole life that an education was Key, that you needed to get a good job for a solid company to pay your bills. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! Because see, while I was told that education was important, I never was surrounded by the most educated people. This is not to say that they weren't intelligent, I consider my parents to be among the most intelligent people I have ever met. They simply had an over abundance of common sense and trivial tid bits of knowledge, which always made them interesting to talk to, but not Ph.D material.

In any event the point is, that I was given a goal, but no direction. I was told get a degree, choose at 16 what you would like to do for the rest of your life. I was always a practical child, and while I knew I loved writing, I probably would never feed myself on it. Therefore, I took the road more often travelled, and became an accountant.

That's not exactly true. I studied to be an accountant, I got a degree in accounting, and I got a job in accounting, but I doubt I will ever become an accountant. It's not how my brain works. I am too interested in, well, interesting things. I also have been told that I have a pretty decent sense of humour (which as of now is not evident, because this is more an introduction to what will be hopefully a much more entertaining endeavour).

How did I get from accounting to writing, and why am I writing this in the first place? That's a good question (one that I hope you are all asking because otherwise I am completely missing the point of these blogs). I am writing this as a writing excercise. I have always been a writer. I first and foremost want to write a book (the subject of the book will be the subject of future blogs), and the easiest way to get started writing is to write apparently. Vicious circle I know but into the breach I go. What made me want to write in this way? That is an interesting enough story...

I was sitting in my office pretending to be an accountant. Like most people who work in an office, I spend the majority of my time looking busy but not really doing anything. In the perfectly appropriate words of office space "I work just hard enough not to get fired". The subject of my mindless wanderings that day was a website called http://www.collegehumor.com

I stumbled upon a comic named Aaron Karo, who had a column called Ruminations. The nature of it is very similar to this. In essence he rambles on about a given theme, making very clever and often humourous observations about daily life. I was basically ruined after that. Here is this guy with a good job (he was working on Wall Street) formally educated, the whole nine, who simply packed it all in to write books and tour colleges, getting wasted and telling jokes.

I want that life.


So basically that is what I'm doing here. I am writing down things about my life. I will throw my own unique perspective on life and current events that I find relative (if you're politically minded stay away because I find Britney Spears going nuts much more relevant than Who is going to be the next President). The ultimate goal is to build up a large enough fanbase to publish a book and actually have it sell a few copies. Just enough to make me fabulously wealthy of course, I'm not greedy or anything.

I look forward to comments. if you think Im trash tell me, if you think Im awesome tell me! If you have anything that you'd like to hear me rant about, set the pins up I will knock them down or fail miserably in the attempt (either way it sounds like a good time).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Toine,

Was taking a break from studying and decided to read your blog. I think you have an amazing talent...keep up the good work...

Your favorite coworker,
MAV

Anonymous said...

everyone wants to get trashed yet be able to work :P you're so deep
-andrea