Subtle Bluntness

Well, I saw two movies in the last two weeks, Jennifer’s Body and Surrogates.  Jennifer’s Body was fun horror/comedy, and Surrogates was kind of fun (because of Bruce Willis) sci-fi/action, but it was Surrogates that got my brain a-scrambling like a midget on a treadmill.  Well, it was a combination of Surrogates and this quote from the lovely and talented Holly:

(Realizing, of course, that I can paint whatever picture of myself I want on here, but that’s beside the point, wink wink.)

That kind of rolled around in my brain at the time like a lost marble, but it wasn’t until Surrogates that it kind of sunk in for me.  Not to spoil anything, but most of the Surries look like their real-life counterparts (Bruce WIllis is Bruce Willis, but with awful hair; Rosamund Pike looks like herself but with big hair and better skin; Ving Rhames looks like himself but with a glorious beard and Bob Marley dreads, etc.) Now I know that it’s probably a question of cheapness on the part of the filmmakers.  Plus why would you cast name actors and not have them look like themselves; but aside from two or three background figures, all the rest of the Surrogates looked like real people too.  Just slightly cleaned up, smoothed out real people without blemishes or scars or body fat.

It’s the best version of whoever that actor is.

Really, that’s what we all do.  Sure we don’t have robot wigs, but I think that deep down everyone does their best to put their best foot forward because most of us believe that deep down, there’s something good about ourselves.  Sure we might want to shave off a few pounds or not have to worry about shaving every 6 hours to keep a smooth face  or would like to thicken up the ol’ head of hair and other things that aren’t talking about my personal issues exclusively, but for the most part, we think we’re all right.  Or that we have the potential, at our core, to be something attractive to others. We might not feel that way, and we definitely exaggerate our own flaws more so than others would, but we all want to think we’re redeemable.  And, for the most part, we are.  Or we could be.  That’s why people play Second Life.

That’s kind of what blogging is, in a way.  We’re putting out some version of ourselves, be it overly positive, overly critical, or just exaggerated in some way, for the consumption of others.  Our words (well, my words) are my Surrogate to you, the uninterested reader who has long since branded this a teal deer and moved on to something with a punchline.

This is how I present myself to the world, at least in this location.  I take on other tones at other places, share different pieces of myself in different areas, but it’s not the full picture.  To put everything out there is to take on too much risk.  Somebody might see something or read something and be offended or confused or whatever.  That’s what Surrogates are good for in the movie, and that’s what Surrogates are good for in the blogodecahedron.  That’s why all those social media things have privacy functions.  We need to keep some folks out and let other folks in.

We’re all one step away from a dentist chair, a robot in a wig that looks like Perfect Us, and no reason to change out of our pajamas.

I got nothin’.  People (me) say it all the time, but I’ve been blogging my ass off for quite some time, and I’ve gotten to a point where I’ve kind of started to run dry on drive, energy, or whatever it is that makes for a quality blog post.  I still have the ideas, honestly, but when it comes down to sitting and writing, I just can’t be arsed.

The fact that it’s taken me like four hours to get this post this far should tell you just how little I feel like blogging these days.  I mean, I have the urge to write the post, to go into great detail about the hows and whys of why I’m so damn tired lately, but when I sit down to do it, I conveniently distract myself with bad movies on TV or whatever.  Any excuse is a good one, I guess; even though I’ve seen Demolition Man probably 50 times by now.

I know what the answer is going to be.  Everyone says, “Take a break!  It’s okay.”  Well, I could try that, but I just took a week off from the day job and all it did was give me the chance to get my days and nights confused while catching up on stuff I normally neglect.

I’m not complaining.  I’m lucky to have a couple of things to keep me busy that actually pay me.  Hell, I’m lucky to have a day job that pays me these days.  The whole purpose of this post was mostly to show that I’m alive and that I can still mash my face against the keyboard with accuracy enough to compose words and sentences.  I still have the Feel Good Friday posts for that too (even though I’m one of the few that still does them), but I figure why not at least put forward a pathetic excuse as to a dearth of content for ye olde blogge?

Wired: But “real” for you is so … unreal. You set The Strain in New York. In the past, your depictions of the city, from Mimic to Blade II to Hellboy, have had a fabulous aspect.

del Toro: It comes from my first trip to New York as a child. I was walking around Central Park, and I saw one of these expensive apartment buildings. At the top was a Gothic tower, and I said to my mother, “A vampire lives there.” I wasn’t being metaphorical. Then we went into the subway and—wow! For a guy from Guadalajara, the subway is mythical. The underground of the city is like what’s underground in people. Beneath the surface, it’s boiling with monsters.

Wired Magazine 17.06

For some reason, that phrase above brought tears to my eyes the first time I read it.  So badly, in fact, that I had to get up and disappear for awhile until I got myself under control.  I wasn’t sure why, until I figured out that the difference between someone like Guillermo Del Toro and someone like me is that while we’re both on our slow march to death, he never stopped being a child.  He never let go of the way a child sees the world; he’s still got that access to everything that changes the mundane into the phantasmagorical in a way I don’t (and maybe in a way I never did).

He’s still got dreams, and I don’t.  I know what you’re all thinking, even if you’re not going to state it.  “You’re not even 30 yet.  You don’t have any kids or a mortgage, so why don’t you go out and chase your dreams! DLTBGYD!”  No, when I even think about that kind of thing, all I can think about is all my past mistakes and misspent days and just… get paralyzed with fear that I’m going to go out, chase those dreams, and find them out of my reach.  Or worse, that I’ll achieve them and be just as miserable with those dreams as I was when I still had the dream to do whatever.

(Yes, I just references both The Toasters and Less Than Jake in that paragraph.  I’ve always kind of wanted to be a rude boy, but you try finding a ska band outside of California these days.  Or even in California.)

Sometimes you find your niche early, excel at it, and you’re happy.  Sometimes you drift along aimlessly in a sea of fear and anxiety, worrying about things you can’t control and talking yourself out of any real risk to shelter yourself from pain.  Sometimes you look at what you dream of, what might be, and realize, “Hey, I’ve already tried that once, and it was a miserable failure.”  Or you look at it and say, “Well, I would go do that, but it’d cost me $45,000 and I’d end up doing what exactly with that shiny new Masters degree?”

I don’t live in a world filled with endless possibilities.  I live in a world where ruin and misery surrounds me on all sides.  I live in a world where deviation from the designated path leads to trouble.  I live in a world where education is either used for something or it is useless, where it’s better to have a job you hate than not have a job you can live on, and where reaching out leads to losing a hand.

I’m a creature of routines.  We’re all creatures of habit in our own way, but none moreso than me.  I drive the same way to work in the morning and I take one of three routes home.  I get home, I change, I eat, I take a nap for 2 3 hours, I wake up, I work or play until 3 4AM, then I go back to bed and get up at 7 the next morning to repeat the process.  I go to one movie theater.  Write a post here by 1:00, write a post here before midnight, see a movie on Friday and write it up by Sunday; write the box office report on Sunday night (though occasionally I forget to do that).

I see my habits, and I see the habits of friends and loved ones as well.  I can tell if something’s wrong by the grammar used in an IM.  I can tell if something’s off by a sudden lack of contact whereas before it was steady.  I grow to have certain expectations about the actions of others, and if they break those expectations, I just know something is wrong.  Even if nothing’s wrong, I’ll invent any number of problems to ascribe to the situation and chew on them until they become a reality.  It’s a blessing when it’s helpful; it’s a curse when it’s a self fulfilling prophecy.  Imagine you’ve got something to be worried about long enough, and you’ll end up having something to worry about (even if it’s just worrying about how much you’re worrying).

It’s kind of like a turtle in a shell.  It keeps me kind of safe, but at the same time it’s a constant restriction.  By the time I talk myself into breaking out of the shell or changing something, the opportunity is gone.  Another chance not taken.

In a world of boom or bust, I always see the bust.

Mars:  Omg, there is a bird outside tweeting its head off.  I want to throw hot coffee on it.

Ron:  Someone should sign him up for blogging instead of Twitter!

Ron:  Oh, wait

Mars:  … hahaha

That’s right, 10 Things Movies Teach Us About Virus Outbreaks made front page over at the IMDB (as well as Fark).  Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

So this week I’ve managed to dig my way out of a gigantic pile of freelance work.  I’m one of the unlucky folks who simply can’t get started without a lot of time pressure, so that means that in a few short days I’ve driven myself to make a list of projects and actually finish them off.  So far this week, I’ve written the following:

A MicroMart freelance contribution
The Weekend Box Office Report
My Bloody Valentine 3-D Review
A Howling Good Time:  Five Great Werewolf Movies
Nerd Rage:  Keanu Reeves Set For Cowboy Bebop Movie

I still have a few more things to do this week, and there’s always my daily posting schedule at Shaktronics and random several times weekly posting at PopFi to continue working on.  Considering PopFi’s numbers nose-dived last week thanks to my distractibility and general laziness, I’m going to be posting at that site frequently this week to try and make up the 700 uniques per day dip the site suffered over the last seven days.

I blame the holiday and the inauguration.  People weren’t at work, so they weren’t surfing the Internet like they should.  On inauguration day, the tubes were so clogged it wasn’t funny, so that probably hurt the site some too.  My last few posts haven’t been the greatest in weirdness either, thanks to a general bankruptcy of ideas, so cross your fingers I can turn it around.

I undertook the challenge on a whim, but I finished it out and I’m incredibly proud of myself.  NaBloPoMo, at least for this month, is over.  I’m kind of looking forward to the day where I don’t glance at the clock, mutter curse words under my breath, and then realize that I have to post to the blog.

Of course, I’m also kind of thinking that I might miss it, much like I loved/hated/missed daily posting at Living Corpse once I stopped updating it.

As big of a pain as it’s been, I’ve really enjoyed posting more here.  To be able to just write about whatever hits me, if anything.  And if nothing hits me, it was nice to just kind of muse out loud about blogging and get all the feedback and see all the shares and hits and whatnot from other bloggers when I happen to accidentally mumble out something profound. That’s meant a lot.

The one thing that this has shown me is that I should probably make more time for this blog, and more time to write things for myself, rather than just work all the time.  Has it taken energy?  Sure, of course it has.  Am I looking forward to a day or two off?  You know it.  Has it been incredibly rewarding and good for me from a mental and emotional standpoint?  Totally.

I won’t be posting every day in December.  I will be posting more often, though.  I really hope I continue to write good posts when I’m not writing daily, too.  If not, then I might be back at this in January.

Congratulations to fellow NaBloPoMo bloggers Holly and LeBlanc for toughing it out with me.  We totally rock, guys.  Next time, let’s write novels!

I had a friend of mine who started a nascent music blog a few weeks ago.  He recently tracked me down and asked me a bunch of questions about blogging.  It’s no secret that most of my friends know I get paid to maintain blogs and that I’ve gotten a couple of freelance articles published.  I also generally push friends into starting blogs to get their work noticed (like my friend’s beautiful photography blog).

I’m a big believer in the power of blogs and blogging, but never before has someone come to me and said, “How do you do this?”  “This” meaning “Somehow turn this little hobby into something that might one day yield beer money.”  I’d never actually considered the fact that the things I do or that the few things I know about blogging might be helpful to others until someone said, “Hey, you’ve made money doing this, teach me your secrets.”

There are no secrets.  I wish I could say there was some magical key you could turn to automatically become a success, but there isn’t.  I also wouldn’t come to me to ask how someone can find success doing ANYTHING, but I digress.

For me, all the opportunities I’ve gotten have come through friends.  In that spirit, suck up to as many people as possible.  Well, okay, don’t suck up, but be friendly and open and talk to people.

Through Sarah I got into freelancing for MicroMart and writing for Den of Geek.  Through my cousin I got on at Shaktronics, which got me my few months’ work at Flektor (and I wouldn’t have started this blog if she hadn’t talked me into it).  Through Newscoma I got to working at PopFi, and since I seem to be doing okay keeping that up to date, it’s looking like I’m actually going to be buying PopFi from its current owner.  SportsBastards is my own creation, but I got a friend to help me set it up and I’m leaning heavily on Rich to do our podcasting technical stuff for me.

I’m confident that if you’re good, people will find you eventually, but it’s a lot better to have friends who can give you a leg up.  If you like someone’s blog, comment and link them, and they’ll probably do the same to you unless you’re like… commenting at some huge blog.  Even that can get you a few clicks back, though.

Other than that, I don’t have any real tips that you wouldn’t hear a million other places from folks with much more blogger authority than I have.

Post daily.  Hell, post four or five times a day if you can do it.  Post early in the day (like 4 AM if you can) to get in on the ground floor of work-day Googling.  Post in Google-friendly titles using key words.  Keep an eye on Google Trends and Digg and what’s going to be on morning TV that day and hit those topics if they’re appropriate to your niche.  Tag every post with Technorati tags, and us as many as you can.  Try to backlink to other posts in your site history wherever appropriate and as often as possible.

Most importantly, find a niche and hammer the shit out of it.  Do I have a niche here?  Nope, but I’m not trying to sell this blog to advertisers.  All my other places of blogging have a niche I work in while there.  It helps a lot.

Other than those actual tips, it’s mostly making friends with movers and shakers who will drag you kicking and screaming into the land of success.

I have a question for my fellow NaBloPoMofos out there.   Since you started posting daily, have you noticed a sharp uptick in traffic for your blog?  I certainly have.  Whether it’s from my posts being better in content or due to the magic of regular and steady updates, my blog has gone up pretty sharply from its October numbers.

Of course, I’m not sure if October was a full month on this platform, but I do know my total hit aggretate has gone up by 1000.  That’s a pretty sharp rise, don’t you think?  That begs the question:  What’s the cause?

If you fine folks could comment here (Holly and LeBlanc, and anyone else who might know the power of daily posts), I’d love to know if you’ve noticed any changes in your blog traffic.  I’ve had a very impressive jump, even over my Wordpress.com days, so I’m wondering if that’s the magic solution to raise the number of hits for any blog or website-type project.

One of the things I tend to do on weekends, despite myself, is completely disconnect from everything not related to sports or bad TV movies on the Sci-Fi Channel.  I’ll read my friends’ blogs (usually all at once late at night when I’ve got free time), but other than that I don’t really pay attention to anything.  It’s like… when I turn off, I completely turn off.

I wonder if that’s normal.  Some people seem to stay tuned in all the time, always commenting about stuff and making great posts.  Even when they’re not exactly feeling on top of their game, they at least keep moving forward.  I just kind of zone out.  This is probably the most attention I’ve paid to this blog, uh, ever.

By the time Monday rolls around, I’ll have 500-600 things in my feed reader.  Usually late Sunday night, I’ll poke around halfheartedly at the various sites I use for various things, then mark all read.  I should probably pay more attention to this stuff, especially where PopFi is concerned, but sometimes I just need to tune in, turn on, and drop out.  I don’t know how those type A folks can just constantly work.

A lot of my NaBloPoMo posts have been introspective things about blogging.  Usually because I don’t have anything to blog about besides blogging.  Especially on the weekends, when I pretty much shut down mentally and watch a ton of sports to regain mental energy.

All the work I do takes more out of me than I let on.