I Don't Have a Dream

I love this holiday, Martin Luther King Day. One time they gave me a parking ticket, where the meter said "free on holidays." Come to find out, they were referring to the privately negotiated holidays of city employees! Still plenty of stupid presiding at City Hall -- let no one forget that.

But I'm kind of sad today, for the public service effort that this blog represents. I should be jubilant: up to 1500 views, which is some kind of geometric growth since the first milestone. I finally got a comment yesterday! Thankful, I am. Also fairly content, after updating all the Disquisitions. Literally rewriting disagreements in the past tense felt like getting it behind me.

Is it the greener grasses I see in a more lateral direction? Google just keeps aggregating views to the same sources of (what I would view as being) bad information. Paul H. was acknowledged by YouTube for his shaving channel, eliciting a somewhat pissy comment from me -- and I LIKE him! (Who doesn't like Paul?)

Perhaps my antisocial nature is the issue, then. I don't know how I got onto this track (sometimes I type "shaving blogs" hopefully in the search box), but I was reading an article about successful blogs recently, which said you have to really like your audience. Not you, reader -- the larger group of potential readers.

That was the toughest question, but I also became more acutely aware of my failure to monetize. Kids have grown, and I will eventually need to provide some other value than my (so-so) cooking ability. I've tried flea marketing, which kind of ties into the preceding as engendering a sense of hopelessness.

Could the Disquisitions become a book, with just some pictures? The story elements ruin that idea. Not that it's a bad story, the triumph over evil powers -- in my bathroom. Outside of that, it's been nothing but a humiliating struggle, all the way. There is no recognized authority at this address.

Alright, that's it! From now on, we're not the Academy. We are... the Shaving Panthers!