Monday, July 26, 2010

Trouble Brewing in Little Ohio

This is my brain after too many hours on the internet.

I started down in the bottom left hand corner looking for something.  Not sure what now.  And I got lost somewhere in the middle.

I think I wanted to find a blog directory.  Then I got distracted by Facebook.  Then I looked at social work jobs.  Had a panic attack.  Then I tried to find writing jobs, but I found a recipe I liked.  Now my head hurts.

As you can tell, I don't have an Ohio topic today, unless it's about a local blogger who went beeeeezerk and set fire to her laptop.

My topic for the day is about the elephant in the middle of the room.

This one is outside, but it's hard to find a picture of one sitting in the middle of an actual room.

I've been walking around this elephant for too long.  I don't dust him so it's even worse than you might think.

I am having a blogging melt down.  A "Come to Jesus" meeting with myself.

I have been asking myself "Why?"  Why am I spending so much time blogging?  Why have I decided to drive all around my county and surrounding counties looking for that offbeat place, that quirky old guy, that giant ball of string?

I don't think I've ever used so many question marks in one post!  There, I used an exclamation point.

Here's what I'm getting at and I'm looking to you all, my blogging friends, to provide some insight.  We blog, we take pictures, we comment on other blogs, we try to be creative and witty....and.  This is where my wheels come off.

In reality, the only people who read blogs are other bloggers.  We love each other.  It's one big humongous love fest.  It's pen pals on steroids.  I do love that part of it.  I love hearing from you.  If it wasn't for you, I'd have nothing but emails about penis enlargement or fortunes waiting for me in Nigeria.

The problem is, I'd actually like to make some money as a writer.  I always have.  I've been doing a superior job at procrastinating for 40 years.  Back before the internet, my excuse was, "Who in the world would print the snippy, sarcastic essays of a frustrated Ohio woman?"  Erma Bombeck already had a corner on that market, although I am her darker twin.

I'm throwing in a nature picture just to add some interest.

So I had renewed hope when the internet bloomed from the middle of Al Gore's forehead.   There was writing everywhere.  It just spilled off the monitor.

You didn't need a publisher anymore to get your message out.  My goodness....you could start your own blog!  And people did in droves...in stampedes...in landslides...in obscene amounts.

People are writing about their new shoes, blind dates, bad in-laws, hang nails, cures for warts...Do I really care?  To be fair, I only follow blogs that speak to me.  If you're on my list, you're my peeps and I'll follow you to the gates of Hell.  Not through the gates.  Just up to the them and then I'm running the other way.

The only people making money are the scam artists who sell us books about blogging or who have their own blogs about blogging.  They tell us how to drive traffic to our blogs, they design new templates for our blogs, they conduct workshops for blogging, and blah, blah, blah.  I have spent countless hours lost in this maze.


Blogging helped me get through my Yellowstone adventure.  I knew you were out there rooting for me.  Ultimately my blog got me in a lot of trouble at work.  It seems that not everyone thinks I'm funny.

I'm asking you all for input before I commit blogger hari kari.

Damn...I accidentally published this post and I'm not done.  Bear with me.

One more thing that gives me a mental wedgie.  Have you been to one of those sites like Helium.com?  I'm not even giving the link because it sucks.  Thousands of sad people write articles so that other sad people can read them and rate them.  If you write ten articles a day and rate another ten articles a day, you can earn 50 cents an article.

It becomes an obsession like any addiction.  Thousands of people sitting at their laptops checking to see if their article has been rated.  Did they make it to number one this week?  Are they sitting on top of the manure pile?  They even have a poetry section.  And all of the poems rhyme.  Shudder.

I haven't decided what to do.  I need a big group hug, then a slap, then a big dish of ice cream with chocolate syrup.  That always makes me feel better.  There's a novel floating around in my brain.  Should I just hunker down and work on that?  Would you all forget about me? 

Oh lordy...here come the question marks again.  Time for me to go.

5 comments:

  1. Oh Judy. . . We're addicted - Hi my name is Scott and I'm a blogaholic. I remember 25 or so years ago it was the CB craze. We traveled some so we "had to have" a CB radio. There were CB clubs and everytime a trucker or a traveler was lost or had trouble they would band (put intended - get it CB = Citizen's Band) Sorry! As I was saying they would band together and get it all well again. Then they would spend 20 minutes congratulating each other and thanking each other and spreading the credit around. It was a beautiful thing - sniff - sniff. It was actually kind of nice, but we used to laugh at their congratulating and thanking. I've often asked myself if I'm just in the middle of an updated version of that as I bounce from blog to blog telling them what beautiful photos they've taken or what an amazing and thoughtful post they posted. Truth is there really are a lot of really good photos out there and I do enjoy looking at them. Maybe that's just what we do to be involved with other people and expand our reach.

    Hey, thanks Judy, this was an amazing post that really made me think.

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  2. Oh Scott, I knew I could count on you. A real man isn't afraid he has a problem. You know, you're so right about the CB thing. Maybe every generation has some version of this. No one else has commented. I can hear the crickets out there. The elephant will remain in the center of the room.

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  3. hhhmmmm maybe you could blog about the journey of writing a novel. Kinda killing 2 birds with one stone sorta thing... don't have to reveal the contents of the novel.. just share the ups and downs... the struggles...the joy of writing, etc. etc. etc. Seems like the obvious to me... but what do I know? I am just about nuts....

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  4. Hmm. Writers sure do have angst. I'm a novelist. That's what I actually call myself. I write and have several unpublished novels edited, books I've agonized over. I understand where you are coming from. Go for it. Write your book. Poor yourself into it. And we, your faithful readers, will wait for you and when you come back, we'll cheer for you. Good luck.

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  5. Teresa....maybe. Will talk to you more about it over nuts.

    Writer...thank you for responding. What a tough life we have chosen or it chose us. I'm stewing on it.

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