This marks the one thousandth post on my blog. I really don’t know if this should be a big deal, or not.
On the one hand, a thousand is a LOT. It means that, for almost three years off and on, I’ve been blathering my thoughts out into the nothingness of the Internet. Occasionally, this drivel gets into the faces of people who appreciate it, and I don’t know if I’d still be doing this if it weren’t for you. Yes, YOU, even the person who stumbled across the blog with a Google Image search (which, according to my dash, is how I get roughly half of my traffic). It also helps that I flat-out enjoy writing, even when the writing feels somewhat arduous. More on that in a bit.
On the other hand, all I’ve done is blather for a thousand posts. I mean, it’s my hope that someone somewhere found something of value in a couple of my posts, but from my perspective, half of the time I’m just brain-dumping into a text window. As much as I’d like to think that the right words in the right order perceived by the right person can save the world, my opinion of myself is not so high to think that I have those words, that order, or such a person that reads this. I could be wrong, though. There’s also the fact that, after a thousand posts, I still only have one actual publication of my own out there and it’s sort of stagnant at the moment. Which is probably due to a lack of promotion. Time to schedule some tweets!
I certainly can’t make a career out of blogging, at least not with just this thing unless I do something like sign up with Project Wonderful for ads and find a way to explode all over Tumblr, so let’s move on.
The dayjob has been stressful as hell lately, but I’m making time this weekend to feng shui the living crap out of the apartment, or at the very least arrange the bedroom in such a way that, regardless of where my other half is, I can isolate myself and write. I have OpenOffice, DropBox, and little else on what I’m calling the Craptop (it’s an ancient Dell Latitude I got from the dayjob office when they were giving away old crap), and it’s portable to the degree I can sit at either the ‘kitchen’ table next to my desk or the writing desk that will be in the bedroom and be free of my major distractions. No Steam, no other games, no chat clients, no Twitter, no Tumblr, no Skype. There will eventually be a nearby shelf with board games, Magic, and other such things, but cracking those things open requires more physical effort than clicking on a link. They won’t interfere with the focus I’ll have when I get that writing groove back.
I’m going to keep the desire to write foremost in my mind, and am mostly looking towards the new year as kind of a fresh start. If I can nail down more of a routine for writing, and meet word goals I set every day, I can be much more prolific, and will finally get around to the rewriting and new writing I’m craving. Pushing forward with Cold Streets by comparison feels a bit sluggish. Maybe it’s a general lack of energy due to how much I’m pushing myself at the dayjob, and I just need a readjustment, which is why stuff is getting moved around.
The most important thing is not to quit. The second most important thing is to fucking write. Third is, I don’t know, generally being awesome? Basically you just have to keep yourself going and making sure people know you’re still at it, and eventually things will click. Or so I’ve gathered.
Anyway, thanks for hanging around, especially if you’ve been here a while. If you want to how far I’ve come, I recommend the Wayback Machine. I’m sure Mister Peabody will happily take you to any number of embarrassing anecdotes in the growth of my blog. And if you get that reference, we should totally hang out.
