A noisy smoke detector.

Blogging about the latest trivialities in my life is eating shit. And so is a smoke detector battery that nobody hears or changes.

You may have noticed that I haven't updated in a while. You’d be correct. When your readership hovers right around zero, there’s not much impetus to take the time and write. But it's also because I've been sitting on a draft of one story for the better half of the year, unsure of exactly how to tell it.

It’s not that the story is difficult or unusual; namely, it’s the opposite. My story idea is an almost exact stereotype of every entry in this canon. I describe a ridiculous problem nobody else notices and my futile attempts to have it fixed. Nobody in power or authority cares. I get upset, talk about how insane everybody is. Eventually, the problem disappears and/or society just lives with it, all the worse for wear.

At first, I was just going to tell that story directly, content to document exactly what happened even if it turned out to be yet another cookie-cutter volume in a collection of identical experiences.

But then I stopped, and scrapped it.

I thought to myself, am I really going to keep writing this? The same thing, over and over?

After more than a decade of this, do I even have any outrage left in me to draw from?

Some artists do like making the same kind of work every time they create. And in turn, some people enjoy familiar art that follows the same beats, every time — myself included. I’m not really an artist, but I have been consistently making something. For a while, that something has mostly been iterations of the same story.

But is that all this is? Is this all it will ever amount to? Maybe I should do more than just archive these experiences, wholesale. Maybe I shouldn't just document every incident that happens with no curation. It's not exactly motivating to see tweets featuring stories similar to mine, written in 30 seconds and condensed into two sentences, that then go megaviral. If I am going to eat shit for another 14 years with no readers, maybe I should at least grow, learn, and change through the experience.

Then again. . .

The fact that people all over this country, in all positions of society, in all matters of circumstance, keep on acting this same way, for years. . . well, maybe the frequency of the stories says more about our world than any individual incident ever could. Maybe someday I can look back and surmise purpose with this compilation of stories, as a unit, that I can’t from any one.

Whatever. I’ll just tell you what happened. No one’s even reading this.

***

I moved into a new apartment earlier this year, and within earshot of my bedroom window was a smoke detector with a low battery. Anyone familiar with a low-battery smoke detector knows the high-pitched chirp it makes, constantly. The steady, intermittent squeak rang out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and it was especially noticeable at night. This persisted for months.

The sound seemed to come from the exterior of the building, and not in anyone’s private space, so I wasn’t sure who exactly was responsible for it. I called my property manager. They had no idea what I was talking about. Eventually they sent someone out to check on it, and that person couldn’t find anything. They couldn’t even hear it.

I then walked around the block a bit and seemed to pinpoint the smoke detector to the next building over, rather than mine. I tried their property manager (whose number I only knew because they have it plastered uglily on the front of the building). While slightly more understanding than my own manager, she was also cheerfully unaware of the problem.

As I described the persistent chirping, perplexed that it could’ve gone on for months with no action, she reacted with a line I could've written myself: "Nobody has ever reported this to us before!"

Of course they hadn’t. Of course a building full of dozens of families hadn’t noticed a steady, high-pitched piercing sound every 30 seconds for every night of their lives. . . for a year or more, probably. Or hadn’t bothered to do anything about it. That tracks perfectly with every blogging story I’ve ever told. I mean, need I even continue?

It took a few weeks of back and forth, calling and emailing the neighboring property manager until they finally came out and silenced the sound. (In 2008, that part alone would have warranted pages of writing. Now, it’s not even notable.)

As of now, there is no smoke detector chirping. Except it comes back every once in a while, then stops, then comes back, then stops again at irregular intervals.

Nobody knows why, and nobody cares.

***

That was the story. And instead of telling it just like that, I had a whole draft written where I described every leg of it in excruciating detail, summoning outrage, and connecting it back to previous times this has happened. I really put on a show.

But again, why?

I've shown how little anybody cares through my stories of customer service, interpersonal relations, and advertising. Clearly, I don't care about telling them, since I go months without writing. So, why continue with a blog? If all I'm doing is archiving, why not jot down a few bullet points or write a few tweets and be done with it?

Who is any of this for? ✍︎