Standstill

In its heyday, this blog received anywhere from 100-150 visitors a day roughly; these days, it receives about 40. That was also the heyday of blogs. That's all you heard everywhere you turned - "blog," "blogging," "bloggers," the "Blogosphere," ad infinitum - so much so that I cringed whenever I heard the word and quit telling people that's what I did. While I never made enough money from this to support myself, I did okay working about five blogs simultaneously despite never making much from traffic alone nor having ever received a check from the Internet's answer to Wal-Mart (I have no problem with Amazon - I'm a good customer myself - just being honest). All of that ended around 2009, when the Depression hit the online world and "microblogging" sites and social networks became the new standard.

So I cut back on the number of blogs I run and regularly post to but kept working rather tirelessly on the few I maintain. Eventually, I was making far more money writing for other ventures than I was blogging and was forced to focus on those jobs. Still, I run my mouth a lot (one of the reasons I don't have a "day job" I couldn't afford to quit) and I really enjoy blogging, if for no other reason than that microblogs don't provide enough room for all my bullshit.

However, I was so very far away from what others refer to as "satisfied" or "happy." I was working literally 10-16+ hours a day, often seven days a week, and still wasn't making enough money to provide for myself comfortably, even with a second income. Some of that is due to the economic "downturn" of the last several years, the rise in grocery prices directly associated with the rise in gas prices, and so on, but no small part of it is directly related to the reputation the Internet has as sort of a graveyard for the lesser-skilled - where hacks and has-beens retire to when they can't find gainful employment offline.

In fewer words: I wasn't being paid what I am worth.

Luckily, that bad reputation - while somewhat deserved - is beginning to fade as more credible and well-known people (Names, they are called in some industries) take to the Web as a means of cutting-out the many Middlemen involved in every line of creative work in this country and circumvent the numerous governmental and social restrictions of more mainstream outlets such as film, "terrestrial" radio, print, and television. And while those outlets remain the bastions of mainstream entertainment and (what passes for) news and information, as well as the standards by which our efforts are judged, that last sentence will be hopelessly dated within my lifetime as the Internet itself increasingly becomes mainstream to the point that it is the invisible delivery system beneath the products it showcases.

What you probably do not know about me is that I eschewed a career in mainstream entertainment for one online, largely because it was far less stressful and more conducive to my personal lifestyle, but also because I have some very real and legitimate problems with how those industries are run. Now that those problems encroach upon the online world, as many of the people involved in those industries have because the Internet has decimated traditional mainstream entertainment, it isn't as important as it once was.

So I am still blogging, though I have had to cutback a lot lately, both to focus on other projects and have what passes for a "life" (read: playing World of Warcraft). This blog has taken many different directions in the last seven years that I have been on Blogger (this particular post is more like something you would have read on the old GeoCities site *) and will continue to go in whatever direction it takes me, but don't expect the daily posts to which you were once accustomed -- more like a flurry of posts now and then between infrequent ones.

© C Harris Lynn, 2013