Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Johnny B. Truant.

Yeah, yeah, you’re saying. You already know me. Well, that’s what I thought, too, but it’s not the truth. The truth is that you don’t actually know me if you only know me through this blog. What you read here is a mere slice of my full personality. What you know is a selective character sketch. What you know, honestly but unintentionally, has become a persona.

You don’t actually know Johnny. You know “blog Johnny.”

See, I always wanted to be funny. So I tried to be funny as I wrote this blog, and I think I often succeeded. But in trying to be funny all the time, I pretended that certain things in my life didn’t exist. For instance, blog Johnny was far too flippant to worry about things. Blog Johnny couldn’t be sensitive or introspective. Blog Johnny couldn’t run a business, because business isn’t usually very funny unless it’s a weasel importing business, and even then it’s only funny if they wear little outfits. No, none of this fit blog Johnny. And it didn’t fit the site.

Well, the time has come for you to meet the real Johnny, with all of his many facets. I promise he will still be funny.

(By the way, don’t worry. I still plan to write mainly about dumb stories and dick jokes. But I’d also like permission to acknowledge that I am indeed a real person with a full life, rather than just the funny guy who exists for the length of time it takes you to read one of my off-the-wall posts.)

So today, I’m taking the apple off … except that I’m going to keep the avatar in the long run because I like it too much to give it up permanently. Kindly ignore the mixed signals.

So here are some things you might not know about me:

• I work as a freelance magazine writer and website developer. It’s a good job and has many great advantages over a normal job, but it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.

• I’m a type 1 diabetic and have been since 13 days before my 13th birthday. It’s an affliction that doesn’t affect me in the least other than the ritual it requires.

• I’m a very serious weightlifter. This plus the point above makes for an interesting combination, because most people expect a diabetic to be somehow feeble or tentative. I’m neither. I hate when people make excuses, so I don’t either.

• I’m also pretty entrepreneurial. If I were to put my goals in a nutshell, I want to be a funny writer as my sole occupation while increasing my standard of living. That either means I have to turn “funny writer” into a profitable occupation or make enough money in a different non-time-consuming way to allow me to be that funny writer for free.

That last one is actually a pretty central thing in my life right now, and it consumes what feels like 90% of my thoughts.

Ah. The key point emerges. At this point, you should hop over to IttyBiz and read today’s post, which I wrote, to see where this is going. Go ahead. I’ll wait here while you read it.

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See, I kept wondering: Can Johnny B. Truant blog for IttyBiz about learning to make money online? Will doing so confuse his brand as a mindlessly funny guy? I mean, there are funny sports guys. Is it possible to be a funny business guy? A guy who also writes about his kids, his college roommates, his foibles learning German, and his fights with other bloggers?

Is it possible to learn, grow, and develop personally… and still get people leaving comments saying that they spit coffee on their keyboards while reading?

I don’t know. We’ll find out.

To bring this full circle, check out my new About page and let me know what you think. I’m making this up as I go along, and I think it will be good, but I don’t know. See, Naomi pointed out something interesting to me. My site is called “The Economy Isn’t Happening.” I chose that name because I wanted to stop thinking about the economy, which was on everyone’s mind, and stick my head in the sand with some laughter instead. But it sort of fits with the IttyBiz project too, doesn’t it? Like, maybe it also means that you can make your own economy? That the bad economy doesn’t have to be happening for you, either, if you make a serious effort to invest in yourself and take the world by the nuts?

Meh. It’s way to early for me to start getting all philosophical. I’m going to go think up some fart jokes and stories about monkeys. Monkeys are fucking hilarious.