We may as well legalize prostitution in this country.  Really, it already is legal.  The exchange of money for sexual favors isn’t kosher, but the practice of whoring yourself out for minor fame is.  And I fear that it’s turning all of us into sluts.

Look, I love writing.  I love golf.  I have a passion for expressing myself creatively.  If I had the chance, I would write professionally in a heartbeat.  The problem is that I did not set up my life to achieve that goal.  I sat in JOUR 100 on the first day of undergrad at Maryland and the professor - the Dean of the J-school - told me that my potential starting salary coming out of school would be $11,000. 

I never came back to that class because $11,000 in DC meant squatting in a home in Anacostia.  Maybe the starting salary is a slight hint to starve yourself to look better on camera.  Regardless, to start, I would have had to become a reporter in an extremely small market and probably write about dog parades for five years before moving to a bigger city and writing about petty theft.  They call that “paying your dues” and I had absolutely zero intention of joining a union where much of the membership is about as well off as a barrista at Starbucks.

So, I set out to business school.  I went and got a practical yet utterly useless degree.  I took classes on logistics - a.k.a. shipping shit.  Got an education on basic market functions that I could have learned by watching a little CNBC.  Actually, I learned more from CNBC than I ever did in biz school.  That’s a knock on my degree, not a compliment the financial news network.

Convinced that my degree was useless and berating myself for not following my absent passion, I went to graduate school to get a Masters degree in public policy.  Besides golf and writing, politics and policy are perhaps my other greatest topical interests.  The two years were meaningful, though not especially insightful.  I walked out the door and into the working world with two pieces of paper I would hope to never really use.  In other words, I wanted the easy path to my real goal.

Meanwhile, I had been quietly writing about golf since my second fall semester in college.  I had to try it on for size, even if no one would ever notice.  My friend Scott Wasilewski afforded me an opportunity to do a streaming internet show (the precursor to the podcast) for his pal’s site, then BroadcastMonsters.com.  The only people that read my write and listen to me talk were my parents.  God bless them for listening to some of the tripe as I struggled to learn what to say and how to say it so that it connected with people. 

Though I thought I was not making much progress, I was getting a little bit of attention.  The email here and there complimenting my work was thrilling.  Getting a guest to come on the podcast was a dream.  How were these people duped into coming on a show hosted by a college kid with a nearly null audience?  I’ll never know, but I am eternally grateful for the practice and encouragement that people like Scott Van Pelt provided me.  He and Christina Kim still hold the record for number of appearances on The 19th Hole Golf Show - and I haven’t had either on in years.

Years - on the verge of seven now - have passed since I began this journey.  I feel like I’ve made steady progress.  I maintain a modest blog, host a half decent podcast, and have a couple thousand followers between every social media site of relevance.  Yet still, I feel so far away from reaching my goal of becoming a professional at whatever the hell it is that I do.

Perhaps part of the problem lies in the fact that I wasn’t then and definitely am not now the only one trying to get famous for doing something they love.  Before the dawn of Web 2.0, people didn’t have access to instant freedom for doing or saying the right thing at the right time to garner enough attention to call themselves a celebrity.  Now, everyone does. 

Facebook statuses and Twitter epitomize my frustration.  Who cares if I’m drinking a beer at the beach?  Equally, who cares about my take on YE Yang’s PGA Championship win?  Despite having thousands of friends and followers, I just cannot convince myself that people are genuinely interested in my opinion.  It is tough to feel captivating when everyone else is trying to do the same thing .  And, what’s more, they’re way more aggressive in peddling their wares than I am.  No zinger intended against anyone who does that, but I just can’t compel myself to feel relevant.

Even if I am that relevant, where does that put me on the food chain?  I mean, we’ve invented the term “internet celebrity” for a reason.  That’s got to be on par with Paris Hilton and other primordial goop that are known just for being famous.  Perez Hilton is in that company because he draws penises in celebrities’ mouths using MS Paint.  If that’s the company that I’m shooting for with my writing, I may as well fucking quit now.

Maybe I can do better than that, but I keep always thinking about the notion that Kathy Griffin is on the D-list.  Shit, that means that I’m probably somewhere on the QQ-list.  I don’t have a freakin’ prayer of ever getting into the single letters lists, even if my staked claim to fame is more noble than dropping mentos into Diet Coke bottles.

Think about this.  There used to just be a simple pecking order when it came to fame.  There were famous people - those you saw on TV, radio, and in print - and there were the rest of us. To get there, you had to do something outstanding.  Win a war.  Rob a bank.  Be a manifestation of God’s word.

Now, there’s some kind of insanely bureaucratic caste system for fame.  Being a good blogger may put me in the double A of professional writing, but I’m probably still in the Untouchables when it comes to societal fame.  The competition is fierce.  Talent doesn’t matter one way or the other.  I’m sure plenty of people way more talented than I am are looking up at me, and I lie in the shadow of people who are well known for passing gas.

It is not an especially pleasant position to be put against everybody that has dreams of notoriety.  Sometimes, I wonder if it’s just better to shut down everything that draws attention to myself.  Wear a white T-shirt and jeans out in public to compliment my lack of a status update, new blog post, or YouTube vid.  The obvious irony remains that I’m lamenting about trying to be famous hoping that you actually checked this thing out in the first place. 

It is a neverending cycle of irony with this whole process.  We’re all trying to become famous on the backs of one another.  I want you to read this blog.  You want me to read yours.  So we’ll each read and tell each other, “Great post!  So thoughtful!”  Hell, we might not even mean it but that’s part of the game.  If we both convince each other that we’re worth listening to, then that validates us for the next encounter with an aspiring internet whore.  Effectively, we’re not only whores, but we’re also the johns. 

I know not everyone is out to be famous.  I sincerely believe that so many people have honest and more meaningful goals in life than to just be recognized.

Despite that, I wonder if great philanthropists brag amongst each other about how much money they have air dropped into the Congo to see no return on investment.  Or if architects jerk themselves off to pornographic blue prints of their colleagues’ work.  I just cannot help but think that people like me are not unique.  In all walks of life, people are trying to whore ourselves out.

After all, the point of getting famous is to make money off of it.  But, if we’re all trying to be famous and there is a finite supply of wealth in the world, then we’re all trying to drink from the same fountain that Ponce de Leon never found.  There is no expansion of the pie - just some get more morsels than others.  And we all have the audacity of Oliver Twist to ask for more.

Clearly we’re not willing to cede our morsels to our brothers and sisters in distress.  Web 2.0 is the perfect model to prove that communism just does not work.  It seems like we’re all working each other over for the good of ourselves and someone else.  We are all giving up something to get something in return.  I’m just hoping that I’m not giving up my dignity to get what I want.  And I’m always counting my morsels to see if I haven’t traded them all away yet.