We have reached the point in the year where food is part of everything we do or so it feels. Had meetings at Babes, Hudson House and Hard Eight followed by time on the treadmill and throwing iron around.
Came across an article or maybe it was a blog post written somewhere that talked about the blog posts no one reads and shook my head because I disagreed with the premise that blogs are dead.
They clearly aren’t even if they aren’t as prevalent or popular as they once were. People still read but they have become more selective because there is an overwhelming amount of information being pumped out.
Where I see the biggest change is in the comments section because that truly is different than it once was, or at least it is on the places I run.
The readers still visit though not in the same numbers as they once did and my number one fan continues their schizophrenia.
They go from being consistent in reading all that I write and or say online to ignoring most of it. I have written the kinds of posts they can’t get enough of and probably some that don’t resonate as well.
But I always know they can’t stay away and will return, it is that inextricable link. Give the monkey a banana kind of thing.
It is a two way deal or so my writing instructors would say. They would talk about writing to at least one or two people every time.
Recent Work
- What Do Fathers Know
- A Clue For SQ & The Others
- When Mothers Scream
- Some Of My Favorite Writing
- Some Questions Don’t Need To Be Asked
- Places In Time & Space
- You Will Take My Hand…Again
- How To Wrap A Shmata Around You
- What About Your Liver
A Fathers Life
I have to be more circumspect in what I share about my children because their stories and their lives are their own now and I don’t want to cross certain lines.
But I can say they are very aware of what is going on in the world and there have been some moments where they needed Dad again.
It’s an interesting place to be because I love helping them and part of me feels badly about the reasons I got to play Dad.
Wasn’t anything they couldn’t have handled on their own, but they came looking for me anyway. They came looking and I knew from the start they were looking for that thing we look for in our parents.
I listened and provided some words of wisdom and made an offer.
“Do you want me to go have a conversation with them?”
The answer was no as I knew it would be and that made me smile. They have been raised to be self reliant. I don’t want to be involved unless it is absolutely necessary. They learn far more that way and gain more trust in themselves.
But I am always available for guidance and explaining things like the importance of understanding the difference between a ceasefire and a cessation of hostilities.
Or recognizing that words can have more than one meaning and the fool is the one that demands that only one be applied in situations where they might not be applicable.
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It is possible I may have a personal bias regarding words and their meaning. They are part of my trade craft and I think about their usage daily.
I enjoy moving them around from place to place so that I can figure out the best way to use them. I appreciate my former teachers and professors might take issue with what is or isn’t grammatically correct while acknowledging the importance of style.
The rhyme and reason of why some words sound sweet and others sour is often subjective which is why we often don’t know what will hit and what won’t.
The blog posts that people don’t read are always tied into that because it includes that which is started but never finished.
Sometimes your voice catches another and sometimes it doesn’t. It is that simple and that hard. Bleed at the keyboard and hope you are heard.
Sometimes the silence is deafening.
There’s definitely a difference in blogs that generate a lot of comments, and even fewer numbers in visitors. However, some of that is the fault of the owners. I still leave comments on a number of blogs, but if I do so 3 times in a row and never get a response I not only never comment again but I stopped visiting. I follow about 15 blogs now, but I was following more. What I found was an inconsistency of blogging by those owners; I wasn’t expecting the type of thing I do (definitely not your blogging content level lol), but I’m thinking one blog post every 9 to 12 months isn’t peaking my interest. Years ago I said that even when we think we’re writing for others we’re writing for ourselves; otherwise, what’s the point.
Hi Mitch,
Two things jumped out at me in your comment:
Lack of response from the blog owners. That is a big one for me.
I try to be good about that always seems rude not to respond and the second part is writing for yourself.
If you are not writing material that interests you how do you expect not to bore the reader.