Category Archives: blogging

A total slut…

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For the last few weeks, one particular phrase keeps popping up on the list of terms that people search for when they end up finding my blog on Google. That phrase: Hot Lesbian Cheerleader.

I can only imagine how disappointed they are when they click in and see that, in fact, http://www.jeffreytharp.com has very little do do with that particular fetish. As much of a pity as that is, I’m glad they stop by from time to time. When it comes to visits, hit counts, and clicks, I’m happy to be a total slut. I’m just happy to see the counter going up, regardless of why they happen to be here. Maybe that makes me a bad blogger, but to paraphrase Eric Cartman, it’s my sexy blog and I’ll do what I want.

For those of you who stopped by hoping for hot lesbian cheerleaders, yeah, I’m sorry about that. Clearly you were lured here under false pretenses. Personally I’d complain to Google, because honestly, if that’s what you’re looking for, I’m the last thing you really want to find in your search results.

Throwback Sundays…

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If there’s anything you can count on in this world, it’s that when Sunday morning rolls around, I’m going to welcome everyone into my way back machine and tell you stories about what it was like back in the olden days of blogging. In keeping with that tradition, I offer up a five selections from January 2007. I have to say that the January 14th post, Middle Class in Crisis, holds up remarkably well and, to me at least, is as on point now in 2012 as is was five years ago.

The world has changed… but clearly not that much.

Hard work…

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You wouldn’t know if from how well put together this place is, but blogging is hard work. As ever, it’s a finely honed knife’s blade balancing what I want to write about versus what I’m going to say that gets me in trouble at the office, with friends, with family, with society in general, and in the eyes of the law. Other times it’s just the general daunting feeling you get when you sit down and try to make the cursor move across the page. In any case, sometimes there is plenty to say, but none of it seems like quite an appropriate topic. During those times you end up sitting at the keyboard smashing out something that rambles one from point to point without ever getting to a “so what” moment. Sorry about that, but it’s just the way it goes. Sometimes the only thing you can do is sit down and let your fingers do whatever it is they’re going to do and accept the final product as what it is… not exactly you best effort ever, but an effort none the less. For any of you out there who have spent any amount of time writing, you’ll know that occasionally that’s as good as it gets.

The way ahead…

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If New Year’s Eve is our annual opportunity to look back on the year that was, then New Year’s Day seems to be the natural counterpoint – a day to look at the 364 days ahead and try to discern the way ahead. Since I’m not psychic, the best I can do is assume that 2013 is going to look fairly similar to 2012 in some ways… and bear no resemblance to it in many others. History, at best, is an inexact guide to what might happen in the future. Like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Still, the year that was sets the starting point and the foundations of the year to come. That means you ignore it at your peril.

So what does 2013 hold? For me, I like to think it holds more time to focus on writing and less time being annoyed by work. I hope it means less money spent fixing rental property and more time spent enjoying the fruits of my labor. Optimistically, I would love it to mean that the blog finally breaks through the 10,000 visits per year mark. As a reach goal, I’m still holding out hope of becoming a professional lottery winner and finding some nice out of the way island to call home. Yeah, so some of that wish list is more practical than other bits. Even so, most of it seems to be in reach and that’s a comforting thought.

Come on, you guys weren’t expecting some batshit crazy idea like find the love of my life, move into the house with a picket fence, and raise 2.5 kids and an airedale, right? I said history is an inexact guide, not that I was going to throw it over the side and charge off in the opposite direction. I’m feeling a touch nostalgic, not suffering from head trauma after all.

I hope this little note has helped set the tone for 2013. It’s a brave new year with more snark, less tolerance of stupid, and even better writing than ever before… so stick around. I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a real trip.

2012 in review…

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Because I’m always looking for a way to post without going to the time and trouble of actually writing, please enjoy this Year in Review, generated by WordPress…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Follow Me (Everything is Alright)…

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One thing I know from a misspent middle age is that Fridays are pretty much the worst day of the week to post a new blog. As soon as the whistle blows at the end of the day, people are off and racing to start the weekend – or in this case the extra long holiday weekend. Even a post with all the right content, perfectly archived tags, and on a topical bit of content just isn’t going to have juice. That’s why Fridays are usually the day I don’t bother posting anything. Even on Saturdays you can reach a respectable audience if you get you post up and Follow mein front of people early enough in the morning that they see if before they run off to do whatever it is normal people do on Saturdays.

I’ll be completely honest, I don’t know what my posting schedule is going to look like for the next few days. This has all been a long way of saying that hitting the regular gates for days and times that I usually post can be a little problematic when there’s travel and a holiday involved. I’m not even going to pretend that I’m going to try to sticking to a schedule for the next few days. With that being said, I don’t foresee things going dark around here either. Stupid things that need to be talked about seem to follow me around like damned plague of locusts.

The best way to make sure that you don’t miss any of the fun and excitement at jeffreytharp.com is to go ahead and click on the little “Sign Me Up” button on the upper right hand sign of your screen. That way you’ll get your very own email notification every time something new shows up. I mean if that’s not a Christmas present, I don’t know what is.

Routine…

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From what I’ve been able to gather from my, admittedly, limited experience, writing is as much a force of habit as anything. Whether it’s blogging, the great American novel, or a run of the mill short story, the only secret I’ve discovered is that the the only way to get words on the page is to sit down and hammer at the keyboard as part of your routine. I’m sure there are methods that work for others, but that’s what works for me. Well, it’s what works all-work-and-no-playfor me until it doesn’t work. If I can be frank, the since Thanksgiving, I’ve had an appalling track record of sitting down and making any more than a cursory effort.

It might not show so much here, but my daily world count is in the pits after months and months of hitting at least 1000 words a day. I don’t know if it’s just the lull between the holidays, some kind of creativity burn out, running out of things to say, or just too much time doing other stuff, but whatever switch turns on when you’re really hitting your stride is nowhere to be found at the moment. That’s not to say that the juice couldn’t magically start flowing tomorrow, but for now it’s missing without a trace.

Tonight I’m going to struggle to get to half of my usual word count. If I happen to hit 600 words, that’s practically a cause for celebration. I’ve often thought that the best writers, the prolific ones, must be creatures of habit – that the must have some kind of internal disipline to churn out words even when they’re not feeling it. The more I write, and the more seriously I take it as a craft, I learn that no two days at the keyboard are alike. There are high points and there are slumps. I know that if I stay with it long enough, I’m going to find my swing again… but for now, I’m going to just try being pleased that I’m hitting 500 words instead of 300 on a regular basis.

Another Sunday…

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It’s another SUnday morning and another five gems from the archive have just hit the streets. It feels good feeding my decidedly obsessive desire to gather everything back under one roof. Let’s just hope that WordPress is the last stop, because honestly, I don’t know that I’ve got it in me to try figuring out a way to repost six years of blog on any other platform. I suspect that this place is going to be “home” indefinitely if for no other reason than moving electronically is at least as much of a pain in the ass as moving physically. In any case, feel free to stop by and take a look at the latest news from October 2006.

A year of Sundays…

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If it’s Sunday, you’re obviously stopping by to read whatever goodness popped up from the archive this week. As usual, there are a couple of gems and a couple of throw aways. Sorry about that. No one brings their A-game every time. Still, I think the stories from mid-October 2006 are worth checking out.

Looking at posts I imported from MySpace before imploding that old account, it looks like the rest of the posts cover the period from October 2006 – October 2008. If my memory is to be trusted, I recall that being a pretty interesting couple fo years. I haven’t counted, but assuming 2-3 posts a week for most of that time, I’m guessing there are another 200 or 250 old posts just waiting to get drug kicking and screaming into the new decade… which means I’ve got about a year of Sunday posts covered without putting too much thought into it. Trust me, when you try jotting down something witty five or six times a week, you learn to appreciate one day a week when you can set it on autopilot. I, for one, am very glad to have 87 single spaced pages and 51,000 words just sitting on the shelf waiting for me to do the old copy-and-paste. Sunday is supposed to be a relative day of rest, right?

Lead me not into temptation…

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It’s getting to be that time of year when it becomes way to easy to fall out of the writing habit. It’s easy to skip a day here, and a day there. Then it becomes two days or three. Suddenly you find it’s been a week and despite that you still have nothing to say. After we week it feels damned near impossible to figure out how it was every part of your routine to begin with. The time starts sneaking away from you and you’ll have no idea where it’s gone.

I know it’s true not just because that’s what it feels like, but because I’ve got the numbers to prove it. November and December are consistently my worst months in terms of page visits. I’m more than willing to take part of the blame for that. I’m not as focused on keeping up the one-a-day rate when I’m distracted by food, family, travel, and friends. That’s just a fact of life. The other part of the equation is out of my hands though – it’s that there are just plain fewer people hanging around reading blogs between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know I’m guilty of neglecting many that I read on a regular basis at other times of the year, so mine shouldn’t be immune from the downturn in readers either.

I’m never going to pretent to have much of a clue about what compels anyone to read the trifles I leave here, so I can’t promise anything enlightening, newsworthy, or even particularly entertaining. What I can promise is that I’m going to do my best to keep up a steady drumbeat during the holiday season and not be led by the temptation to “take some time off” just because things happen to be a little slow. The fact is I’m lazy and getting things jumpstarted again after Christmas is just too much of a pain in the ass to want to deal with when the time comes. It’s far better to keep plugging away and let inertia carry me through the new year… or the Mayan apocalypse… whichever comes first.