His Blog Sucked and You Won't Believe What He Wrote...

The bait...the hook... the gimmick.  I am sure you have seen this little trick all over the internet. That tantalizing little tempting word choice daring you to give that blog link a hit and find out 'what he wrote.'  It's a trick, it's a numbers game.  A blog is a success based on the number of page views, the number of comments, the number of "likes" you get from the public.  In a world where a person's self-esteem is obsessively tied to the number of online "friends" or "followers" or the number of people who like your hash-tagged duck-face pictures, what should we expect?  And more to the point, what does it yield?  Nothing more than a pie crust self-esteem built on the tolling and tabulation of tangential relationships (love my alliteration).

Despite knowing this, I fall into the trap of looking at the number of page views of my blog.  And being the math guy that I am, I of course had to plot the page views over the past twelve months on a graph...

And what does the data say?  My blog sucks... big time!  Not just sucks, but it sucks and is getting worse.  In fact, I am getting more consistent at writing posts that fewer people read.  Ask any of  your friends taking statistics, that is what the graph says.

So how do I fix this problem?  What problem?  This big bad blog ain't monetized.  Do you see any ads urging you to buy testosterone pills or cheap airfare?  Nope, me neither.  Nor is my ego tied to the number of blog hits I get.  No, my ego is doing just fine on its own (maybe too fine at times if you ask some people).  This is because I write my blog for me.  It is a part of me that I put to paper (or 1's and 0's) each week.

Now lest I falsely claim that I don't give a rip what others think; sure I care.  In fact, I have asked others what I can do to write a better blog, fully expect the answer to be: 1) "Stop writing altogether;" or 2) "You have a blog?"  No, the answer I got was not what I expected.  It was "Choose a single topic and stick to it."  Apparently people connect with bloggers based upon their core topic, be it politics, religion, satire, music, or whatever.  The world wants a piece of you, but only a small piece, and never ALL of you.

So what do I say to this advice... NUTS! (historical reference there).  No, I don't have lots of readers, but the ones that I do have are the ones that I want to have, the ones I care about.  They are my family and friends, including some friends that I have never met before.  I write to make them laugh, to cause them to think, to let them feel, to share my life - my full and complete life - that I live.  I take joy in hearing that a friend I have not seen in 20 years got a good laugh at a post (hopefully it was one that I intended to be funny).  I write to stay in touch with extended family that I only seem to see once a decade.  And mostly, I write for myself, for my own amusement, my own betterment, my own well being.

I don't intend to confine or sell myself to fit that mold for the sake of notoriety.  Doesn't society ask that of us enough as it is?  It wants to tell us what should be important to us; a car, a look, a phone, a job, a fling, a life style, a whatever.  We get tricked into valuing what other say we should value, but not the things that truly bring us joy.  We look to what our neighbors or coworkers or Hollywood or marketing firms value and forget to look at what we value within.

 In 1637, the Dutch got drawn into "Tulip Mania" where a single tulip bulb would sell for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman.  What the what?  Crazy, right?  But each person built up the other person's belief that tulip bulbs were what they needed.  Not wanting to get left behind in society, the whole market followed until someone realized, "You guys know they are just flowers, right?" and the whole market crashed, ruining fortunes, markets, and lives.   I had my own tulip moment back in '05 when I was made a relatively young junior partner at a large Intellectual Property law firm.  I was up next in the cue for a corner office, I had a vote in the firm, and I was running my own cases.  My career was becoming everything my peers told me it should be.  But this came at the cost of my family, my health, my time, my quality of life.  And even though I realized this, it was terribly hard to step away from all of this when a new offer came along with all of the things I valued (time, freedom, health, travel), but few of the things (high pay, office, prestige) that my peers valued.  And only after I took that leap of faith, was I able to find the life I wanted.

So yes, by the measure of the rest of the blogosphere, my blog don't hunt.  But guess what? The blogger don't care.  It is mine and I am who I want to be.  I get to be the wannabe comedian, the amateur philosopher, the pretend poet, the unordained oracle, or the perplexed parent.  I can be the full person I want to be and explore the many sides of being human and not feel forced into a confined little box that society has ready for me.  So read my blog or don't read it, either way.  I dedicate it to those people who are willing to ignore cajoles from the external and instead listen to the beautify pull of the internal.