The Blog is Dead! (Long Live the Blog!)

Now that's what I'm talkin' about!

We are all savvy consumers of eGoods by this point, with our ethises and ethats pouring into our brains and homes at a pace faster than a galloping gazelle.  eBooks!  eFriends!  eFamilies and sheets and blankets and lives and alter-egos and fandoms and playmates!

Of course it really all started with eMail.  Then it was chatting on ‘boards’ or ‘rooms,’ how quaint.  Then IM, then came blogs.  Ah, blogs.

I started thishere blog in the fall of 2005, or about 8.5 years ago.  I was in a very different place in my life, with a very different brain, but all along in the blog thing I meant only to write as myself, for me, about me, sometimes only TO me.  It was a heady time of personal blogs, with everyone having at least one, and some of us tapping away on multiples, several times a week.

All for fun.

(OK, there was the Shrinking Piggies blog, which was for motivation, but we had fun there too!).

I am sad to report that, as reported before here among other places, things have changed and the tide has not yet turned back to 'blogging for fun.'  No, nowadays it appears that it's blogging for profit,' which is not the same thing at all.

Today I read this festive little piece about how to get started in blogging, build traffic, and eventually turn that ol’ blog into a money-maker.  It’s divine….ly depressing.  Note how the notion of ‘blog’ is now a topic-bound item, with no room for ‘middle of the night ranting.’  That you have to find your ‘niche,’ and trackback, tweet/retweet, pingback, link lavishly, namedrop, cajole, wheedle, and spit on your thumbs to make any success at all from your blog.  You have to put in HOURS of research for one post, so writing even just one post daily is like a full-time job, but hey Mister if you want to be a world-famous blogger, you have to put in the tough hours, do the hard work, nose to the grindstone (or screen) and churn out that dang work.

Yuck.

No.

That’s sounds like about as much fun as….working, and I do enough of that already.  So, don’t listen to that dour buzzkill, kiddoes – just write from the heart, write fast and furiously, do what you love and the money will follow!

Just as long as you remember that retweeting thing.  That probably works.

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If you are ever in the market for a new dishwasher, don’t even THINK of getting anything but a Bosch. 

Wise words you’d do best to heed.

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Our roof needs to be replaced, the house needs to be repainted (or re-sided), it’d be nice to have a new-to-us car for commuting purposes (gas savings, here I come!), but what I would REALLY do if I had an extra few thousand bucks?

HOT TUB.

Aw, yeah.

What would YOU do if you got an extra, say, $5000 to use however you wanted?  I’m thinking hot tub is #1 on most lists, am I right?

Do blather on about your choices down in the comments, and we’ll see one another again soon.

Tiff out.