Inside The Mind Of Konway East

Konway East, looking right at home on the red carpet.

From Konway’s bio: “Word on the street is that Konway’s page is where the cool kids all hang out.” Well, I’m a cool kid, so I decided to check it out, and …

My goodness, I just got lost on your blog for over an hour. I was reading post after post and leaving comments, when it suddenly struck me how in sympathy we are in our thoughts. In fact, so simpatico are we that I have put in a call to my yenta (matchmaker) and asked my astrologist to do our charts (I need your date, place and time of birth, please) to make sure that our union will truly be as blessed as I foresee.

Me: Konway, I went all the way back to your first post and found that you began your blog in April of 2010, and apparently never looked back. I’m always interested in learning how people discover their gift. Does this also mark the beginning of your writing career, or have you been a writer for much longer?

Konway: I don’t get paid enough to consider it a career, and I don’t believe I’ve yet discovered this gift you have mentioned. However, well before this blog, I’ve been prone to sharing my thoughts via the computer and internet. I’ve had various blog iterations before, but always kind of lost interest at a certain point. This was my first attempt to sustain a “blog” for more than five or six days. It looks like I did it!

Me: I’m interested in how you came by your screen name, Konway East, a/k/a Konnie Cheddar. You being a big-city sophisticate from Chicago, I’m surprised by the cheese reference. Does it have some special meaning for you, or is it just a Midwest thing?

Konway: You mean you don’t think that Konway East is my real name? Or that my friends all refer to me as Konnie Cheddar? To be somewhat honest, it’s loosely inspired by a hero of mine, a gifted rapper who also just happens to come from the Windy City. A group of hooligans from BlogCatalog started calling me Konnie one day, and I was inspired to add a last name to that moniker by a fake girl named Connie Cheddar that a good friend of mine once dated. Big city or not, I’m pretty sure everyone loves cheese, though.

Me: I enjoy your off-center sense of humor. It fits with mine, as I have an overdeveloped sense of the ridiculous. So often I wonder if people ever listen to what they’re saying. Is it the unintentionally funny things that people say and do that attract you to a story?

Konway: Hmmm, I’m not sure if that is supposed to be a compliment, but I thank you, just in case it is. I think anyone with any type of sense of humor will agree that true humor is what you make of things that maybe aren’t inherently funny. In fact, I think that was the whole basis for the show Seinfeld.

Me: You write on a wide range of topics, from local news, to politics to sports and entertainment. Is there a particular subject that interests you more than others?

Konway: I suppose if I did some analysis of everything I’ve ever written, I could probably demonstrate that I have a strong subliminal interest in subjects like Kanye West, the Republican Party, or old people, but I try not to discriminate when I’m putting them up on the blog. This lack of focus is probably my biggest strength and/or my biggest weakness.

Me: I see that you have begun 285 Discussions on BlogCatalog, and I notice that often you’ll take an adversarial position, sort of act as a devil’s advocate, or introduce a controversial topic of your own. Are you easily bored? Do you enjoy the sometimes heated discussions that result?

Konway: I’m either easily bored or easily entertained. I dispute the notion that I am a drama queen of sorts or that I have any relation to the Devil, but I do enjoy a good discussion every now and then. I see the world as shades of gray with very little black and white, so I have no problem arguing just about any position. Really, I just like interacting with different types of people.

Me: Konway, you’re an intelligent and interesting writer with a perfectly diabolical sense of humor. The post you did on how much you dislike olives was very tongue-in-cheek and extremely clever, especially adorned as it was by the picture of the two men exchanging a kiss.

Konway: I do hate olives, but I am glad you noticed the thinly-veiled reference to gay marriage. To be honest, for the longest time I thought people were fighting for gay mortgages, and I never understood what the big deal was. Then I found out it was about gay marriage, and I still don’t really understand the uproar. Now, if they wanted to ban olives, I could get behind that …

Me: Is there a serious side to Konway East? Or do you, perhaps, write in a more serious vein on another site? Or could it be that, when you’re not dazzling us here at BlogCatalog, you’re writing a book? I know that there are a lot of people here who have written books. Do you ever daydream about a book with your name ~ your real name on the cover?

Konway: What you see is what you get. I don’t take anything in life too seriously. It’s important to keep it real, but never TOO real. If I ever wrote a book, it would probably be four or five pages long. I just don’t have the attention span to read a book, let alone write one. That being said, it would be titled “Konway East: In his own words. No, seriously, they are words that he made up. You may not understand any of this book.” We’ll see …

Me: Do you have a good writing support system? I have been building one here among friends who I have met online and who speak the same language as I do. Do you find it helpful, having a community of friends who are also writers?

Konway with his less well known friend Kanye West.

Konway: I hate to say it, but my wolf pack is a one-man show. I enjoy the discussion board interaction for its own purposes more than I do for enhancing any “writing” that I do on my blog, which may explain the fact that my blog posts are so absurdly short.

Me: What one thing do you enjoy the most about writing? Are there any little tricks or devices you’ve discovered since you began that you’d like to share with our readers?

Konway: I simply enjoy that it is a medium that you have so much control over. You can read and review and think about something as you write, which really ends up making my thoughts seem a lot smoother and more coherent than they actually are … I think.

Me: I have heard rumblings, from an undisclosed source, that you are thinking of running for office. Any truth to those rumors? And would that account for your obvious “interest” in politics?

Konway: Since it is a fake office that I essentially made up, I am “running” for it in the same way a dictator would try to win his job. In my mind, I am already the President of BlogCatalog’s Discussion Boards no matter that the “voters” say, and really, that’s all that matters. Which is good, because it turns out any voters would strongly disagree.

Me: Do you, as so many others here, have a “day” job? What are you doing in the world when you’re not slaving away at your computer?

Konway: I absolutely have a day job, which is probably the last thing anyone would expect me to do (no, not a garbage man, as so many have guessed.) Blogging is just the part of my life that I use as a creative outlet when those around me are tired of me using them as my creative outlet. Outside of that, I don’t do anything too out of the ordinary, although, I do occasionally enjoy base-jumping from tall buildings in downtown Chicago.

Me: How often do you write for your blog? Do you keep to a regular schedule or simply write when the urge takes you?

Konway East with his good friend, Barack.

Konway: I wrote every weekday for a year before I needed a short respite, at which point my friend Barack let me borrow his house at Camp David for a month to recuperate. I took a couple months off and re-formatted to make it slightly less time-consuming, and now try to update every day for my four or five loyal fans (family members.) It’s certainly a little less rigid now, so if I don’t update for a couple days or something, don’t go calling the police or anything like that.

Me: Where do you see yourself in a year’s time? Five years? Is there a method to your madness, or are you writing to entertain yourself and your fans?

Konway: I don’t pretend to know the future…well, sometimes I do pretend, but I really don’t try to plan any further than the current day if I can help it. Of course, I imagine that in twenty years or so, I will have brought about world peace, ended poverty and hunger, and rid the world of cicadas. Either way, I have to say, everything I do is for the benefit of myself and/or my family and friends. If other people just so happen to find enjoyment in my blog or the world peace that I create, then so be it.

So there you have it my friends, an intimate look into the mind of Konway East. Be sure to visit his blog at: http://watercoolerthe.blogspot.com/