How to blog

1. Write stuff and post it to a blogging platform.

2. Feel wretched because the stuff you posted (see Step 1) is ignored by the entire world.

3. Feel even more wretched because you realize that a) "to ignore" is, in fact, an active verb, and, b) the entire world isn't ignoring you. That would require conscious decision-making to stay away from your blog. In truth, they aren't even aware of you.

4. Write crazy stuff and post whatever you feel like. There is security in obscurity, and freedom in isolation. Tell fart jokes. Post lousy poetry. Write political screeds in iambic pentameter. Who cares? No one is reading it anyway!

5. Write more, and better stuff. Interact. Follow people. Learn. Grow. Improve.

6. Get your first followers. "OMG, HF, OMG! I haz a FOLLOWER!"

7. Get your hundredth follower. Feel important.

8. Get your two hundredth follower. Feel wretched, worrying that what you're posting isn't good enough for "the big time". Feel even more wretched because you don't really know what "the big time" is.

9. Lose a follower. Feel wretched.

10. Have some comments that say your posts are of lower quality than "what we've come to expect from you". Feel wretched.

11. Have a post go viral. Feel elated.

12. Viral spike fades. Feel wretched.

13. Spend so much time working on all the business that your moderately successful blog has brought in, you don't update the blog as much as you used to. Feel wretched about that.

14. Vent about how wretched you feel. Have a long-time follower quietly tell you that you are being an ass. Feel wretched.

15. Recall the freedom of obscurity, how, almost as it was in an imagined childhood, what you did and said derived solely from what you WANTED to do and say, not from what you thought you SHOULD be doing and saying. Feel... not wretched, exactly, but bemused. Wonder if that sense could be recaptured, that diaphanous wisp of elation lured into your palm and cupped there, to be held close and breathed in.

16. Write stuff and post it.

===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.

10 comments:

  1. ROFL!!!!!!! Tony, you are hilarious! This is the funniest thing I've EVER read about blogging!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lol funny! True too. I reacted like that when I got my first follower.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Post lousy poetry." - Check.

    "Write political screeds in iambic pentameter." - Oh, how I *wish*

    Great fun, Tony - though, not up to what we've come to expect...just sayin'

    --edited for typos - to remove, not add (I hope)--

    ReplyDelete
  5. Haha, This is brilliant cause it is so true. *grins*
    At least the knowing your posts are ignored parts!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Write stuff and post it.

    Pretty much all I do. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks, everyone! Follow this advice, and I guarantee you'll have a heart full of emotion!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for leaving a comment. The staff at Landless will treat it with the same care that we would bestow on a newly hatched chick. By the way, no pressure or anything, but have you ever considered subscribing to Landless via RSS?