CityBeat columnist Erik Himmelsbach loses his day job and gets in touch with how much he loathes personal blogs.

Before I went on forced employment hiatus a few weeks ago, I spent much of my downtime at work reading – with much contempt – these circle jerks of cyberspace. I’ll come clean: It’s entertaining, in a gnarly car crash sort of way. Everybody links to everybody in this secret society of hasbeens and hacks, who gleefully hemorrhage their vapid opinions, shamelessly namedrop the parties and people they know, and plug their self-published vanity projects or whatever mediocre second-rate fishwrap that dares publish their prose.

So for therapy he goes and turns this week's column into a blog-in-print. He writes about dropping 10 grand to keep his cat Oblio alive and about how "there’s something utterly mortifying about not working. This is the start of my third week at home, and it becomes easy to turn into an emotional jellyfish." His conclusion: "Damn, writing this column isn’t taking my mind off it like I hoped it would."