Eight Months a Blogger

So, I’ve been at this for 8 months. A few things I’ve learned:

a) Building up an adoring fan base numbering in the tens of thousands is harder than you might think. A while back I received a comment, I assume from somebody paid to troll for customers, that since I had “high quality content” I should consider “monetizing” my clicks. He suggested a website I could visit to see what it was all about. Ever game, I visited the site, and among the many sources of encouragement was a thread in which some person in India was complaining that for all the ads he was running, he was still making just a pittance, even though he tallied about 100,000 views a day. 100,000 views a day.  On a good day, when I’m really on fire and pumping out my best stuff, I might get four or five. I don’t guess that makes it high time to monetize.

(b) I know it strains credulity, but nobody cares what I think about music or movies, which is sad, really. Songs of the Day is my favourite thing to write, and Great Movie Scenes is almost as enjoyable. However, since only about 11 people in total have even viewed these entries (presumably by accident), it looks like I’ve misjudged what the market finds interesting. I’m stubborn, though. There’ll be more.

(c) No matter how much I rant about politics, nothing changes. This isn’t consonant with my conviction that I’m one of the world’s foremost opinion leaders, so something’s out of whack.

(d) The internet is amazing. Despite my meagre readership, I’ve got views from China, India, all over Europe, Australia, and quite a few (proportionately) from the U.S. Every post is like a message in a bottle that somebody, somewhere, finds washed up on her beach (unless it’s about songs or movies).

(e) There may not be as many insane haters out there as I feared. Thus far there’s been no hostility, despite a steady stream of what I’m sure are some rather polarizing opinions, depending on your politics. There are benefits to obscurity! Nobody’s even remarked that I seem a bit scattered, screaming about foreign policy one day, and enthusing about small furry animals the next. Throwing everything and anything at the wall, I’ve gone from pillar to post, writing about topics as unrelated as the decision to drop the A-Bomb on Japan and my ideas for new reality TV shows (complete with proposed jingles). Yet not one of 12 comments I’ve received has been an exasperated plea that I learn to focus.

(f) Writing is fun! I used to write quite a bit in my former job, but it was always about things that didn’t really interest me. This is much better.

(g)  Time passes way too fast. No kidding, you say? Yeah, I know, but listen, it really passes way, way too fast. The blogs I began with seem like ancient history now. The first ones were rants about Trump from before he got elected! Remember that nervous but hopeful time? No? Me neither, but there I was writing about it. Those old posts, fossils from a long-ago geological epoch, still sit there, overtaken by events.

(h) A “like” is the world’s most intoxicating drug. It only takes a couple to keep me going.

I’m determined to keep on with it in 2018. Holy crap, it’s 2018!! That’s well into the 21st century, for the love of God (see para. (g), above)!  It wasn’t very long ago that I could never have imagined myself as a part of the blogosphere, or the blogosphere itself for that matter. To me, it wasn’t that long ago that I first saw the internet, on a computer at work, one of a half-dozen or so in the office that were connected to the web. Now look at me.

My Mom used to say that the worst thing about contemplating mortality was thinking about all the things you were going to miss, wonderful things you couldn’t even imagine. Having been an adult when you had to go to the bank before it closed on Friday and get a human teller to hand you paper money if you wanted cash for the weekend, I can see what she meant. It’s a thought that makes me keen to keep a close watch on what’s going on, to take it all in, and as long as I’m watching the parade go by, I may as well write about it.

Happy New Year, dear reader, if you’re out there. I’m going to keep ranting and blathering, just in case.