Thursday, February 18, 2010

Metablog 101

So now that I’ve posted a few hundred blog posts, I think it’s time to reflect on my progress.  I started this blog because I was naive and stupid.  I thought people would listen to me.  Apparently, I had a big enough ego then to believe that I was destined to be famous, I just had to keep on writing and someone would notice me.

So I would write about what I thought.  I wanted people to recognize me for the genius I was.  Maybe I could get a syndicated column somewhere and write for a living.  Technically, I do write for a living, but it’s incoherent (more so than my blog) because it’s all computer code.

After a while, I just kept on writing because I wanted to.  I still cared about what other people thought, but I didn’t want to market too much because that felt like I was exposing my ego.  That’s true, I hate my own ego and yet I have a desire to feed it with compliments from strangers who wouldn’t give me the time of day.  Am I messed up or what?

Then I found out that I could make money from blogging.  So I set up my Google Adsense account and I set up an Amazon Associates widget (still here) and figured I would rake in the dough.  I didn’t because, again, I haven’t been promoting myself all that well.  To top it off, most of the social networking sites for bloggers don’t have people I’m interested in.

I guess I was expecting a microwave dinner when I should have been waiting on the stew in the crock pot.  In any case, after posting so many blog entries, I finally realized that I’m not all that great a person.  And that’s just fine with me.

The truth is, I’m nothing more than a small thread in the grand design of human existence and I’m probably a bland color at that.  Sure, it’s a little depressing and I’m not exactly excited about it all.  But you know what, it doesn’t matter all that much, because after reading up on all those prophets and apostles who were great men and women, I don’t want that.  The things they had to do to get attention and still they were laughed at and scoffed at and ridiculed.

So the problem comes down to this: do I continue this blog or not.  Well, I think I’ll continue it because I figure I should get as many thoughts and ideas out of my head and keep a record of them somewhere.  At the very least, it will help me develop my writing skills and I may just get a nice job that pays the bills with this new found skill.  But I won’t hold my breath in anticipation.

It’s not that quitting this blog isn’t an option.  I could quit today or tomorrow and the few readers I have wouldn’t mourn my passing.  But I like writing about the stuff I write about.  If I happen to build a large reader base or make enough money to quit my day job, then that’s alright with me.  And if I don’t, well, that’s alright with me too.

I’m a blogger and I enjoy it.