I Con No One But Myself

Hello World!

This is my first posting to this blog. I've given a lot of consideration to the name. I threw out The New York Times because, well, it'd already been done. I thought about Fuzzwhizzle And The Freaks, but even I don't know what that means. Finally, I narrowed it down to Vagabond King - a moniker I've been given by a few people - and Icon. Over the course of my life, being a writer, I've often thought about what name I would give my auto-biography. I've had the name Nomad before, but I really liked the name ICON. Unfortunately, I understand someone else has used it for their biography... and they're famous! Stupid Flapjacks! So, ha! I beat them to the punch! I'm using ICON for my blog.

My first thought for using ICON was, of course, because I'd be so darn famous. I was even thinking of making the book extra thick so I could beat back the crowds that would surely line the streets scrambling for my autograph - which humble little me would naturally give them because I wouldn't let fame get to my head. So, naturally, I planned to write this great biography talking about my early years as a struggling writer, my first novel, my first four or five Oscars, my Nobel prize for literature, and so on. I would spend some time talking about the great loves of my life - including my current wife and our, oh, say, ten kids... yeah, that sounds good. Unlike those other Hollywood romances, ours would be just fine thank you, because we'd still live in a small town and we'd still drive an old pick up truck and take the kids to soccer practice before jet setting off to Europe for the weekend. But as I actually sat down and started to think about what my life has really been life, and the direction it has really been going, I came to a stunning conclusion... "I con nobody but myself."

I mean, look at me. Look at me. Okay, force yourself. Please? I'm hideous. Not worst smelling teenage boy tennis shoe hideous, but certainly worse off than the Phantom of the Opera hideous. And I'm not just talking in the looks department. I have average intelligence. I have hardly a dime to my name and thousands of dollars in debt. I live at home with my parents. I could go on. I'm like the Comic Book guy from the Simpsons without the comic book store. If I knew what was good for me, I'd just go ahead and give in to depression right now and be done with it.

And let's not even talk about internally. Internally I'm a mess. I procrastinate. I lie. I cheat. I steal. I sin hundreds of times a day - and that's just in the car on the way to work. I have doubt about everything. And I am so full of myself. The only thing healthier than my appetite is my ego. I can even be superior in self deprecation. If you could see my heart... and not just with a chest x-ray, but metaphysically as well... yeuch!

So how do I do it? How do I survive? Why don't I wallow in self-pity and just kill myself? Because... I'm having too much fun.

You see, the greatest miracle of them all is that what you think of me doesn't matter. What I think of me, doesn't matter. Its only what God thinks of me that matters. And He loves me no matter how hideous I am. He loves me under the rocks that I crawl. He loves me down all the gutters my mind travels. He loves me no matter what side of the track I live. He loves me when nobody else loves me.

I can't con you into thinking I'm a great person. I can't con God into thinking I'm a great person. Ultimately, I can only con myself... and what good does that do.