
I’ve been regularly producing content for over a year now. I haven’t really gone anywhere in particular, namely because I wasn’t trying to go anywhere in particular. My goal was to post my thoughts and feelings candidly, perhaps showing my personal/emotional development over time. Really, I did it for myself, to prove a point, that I could regularly post and write and be candid about my life. But really I’ve been hiding in plain sight, like a would-be-radical nudist standing alone in the forest, among friends but otherwise alone.
I have not made any efforts to attract any web traffic. My best excuse is that if I had worried about web traffic I never would have written anything because I would have been overthinking monetizing web traffic.
How can I attract more readers?
I could start with Search Engine Optimization, obviously. And I would need to make one particular change: I would need to make this blog about one thing, a thing that can be summarized in one word or perhaps a short phrase. For example, I could make this a blog about “existentialism” or “Jungian Individuation”. People need key words and phrases to navigate the internet; it’s a big place. But I’ve never been good at narrowing myself down like that. As a matter of fact, I have spent a lot of energy avoiding being labeled. I squirm everytime I feel a label boxing me in.
My blog would greatly benefit by limiting myself to a label. It might be the right way to go. I don’t suspect it would limit my creativity too much. I could open up posts with a common theme and then take a tangent.
It’s funny that Google, along with the marketplace in general want to box us in. There an ever-present human force that wants to freeze the world into clearly defined categories, and theres a nearly equal force that wants to break all of the categories; I impose the first and suffer from the latter.
I joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers with great enthusiasm. But after spending a few weeks working overtime, five stories underground, pulling miles (literally miles) of heavy cables through difficult-to-reach spaces, I am no longer so enthusiastic. I might as well just say it straight: I am not happy with my work.
It’s good work. I’m earning an unexpectedly good wage in this position. I’m helping build something real and meaningful, a stadium that many thousands of people will enjoy, and I’m pulling the cables that will carry the signals that will allow millions of people to watch sports and other live events. That’s interesting, and if I really needed to, I could make this a life. But the nature of the work isn’t for me. I am considering alternative work.
This job isn’t good for me in the long run. I could survive. I could make it work. It isn’t bad. But I sincerely suspect that there is somewhere else that I can thirve.
Now what?
I got a few rolls of film back. There’s some pictures I really like:
I see the four wings again. They form a symmetrical cross. They’re much more clear now. They’re covered in eyes. I can’t quite count the eyes, perhaps, four, six, or eight. It is hard to be certain. There is a rushing of air. A deep voice speaks.
“Approach(eth),” it says.
It is frightening.
No other god is in sight.
I do not know what this means.
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