Blogger, Google thyself

If you're reading this post, you are a "blogger." You may not post blogs, but you read them. In my book, that makes you a fellow blogger.

Today's post, fellow bloggers, is both an admission and an exhortation.

The admission: blogging every day is goddamned hard work. I think of cartoonists, or columnists, or fellow bloggers, who routinely crank out new work for each rising of the sun. It's inspiring to witness. Daunting to undertake.

Since September 20, when I started blogging here in earnest, an effort triggered by my book - The Beat Handbook - becoming available on Amazon, I've only missed one day of blogging: Oct. 9. I was traveling, and just didn't "get 'er done."

Inspiration to keep blogging here is sporadic. Very few readers - I know I have some thanks to Sitemeter - post comments. Is it too hard on Blogger (Crystal finds it cumbersome)? Are my posts uninspiring? Is the notion of winning a free book just too hard to fathom for some reason (the pressure of competition)?

So there was the admission: I find this daily blogging effort difficult. But what is the exhortation?

The exhortation is to persist! I offer this exhortation to you, as a fellow blogger, but also to myself as a reminder that persistence pays off. Very few huge accomplishments come about in one short ejaculatory spasm: they result from dogged determination and persistence over time. That is how I learned to play the banjo. That is how I earned a doctorate. That is how I published a book.

And that is how I blog. One day at a time.

One small inspiration, for me at least, is ego-surfing on Google. Nowadays, when I put "Rick Dale" in a Google search, I come up third (on the other hand, if you go to the "more" dropdown on Google and search for "Rick Dale" under Blogs, it comes up as the first hit). Hell, I did't use to come up at all in either place. And "The Beat Handbook" is the first hit on a regular Google search.

All in all, the reinforcement - on an intermittent schedule (<---that was for all my behaviorist friends) - is sufficient to keep me going. For now. I appreciate Elizabeth's admonition to keep going. And Crystal supports my crazy efforts to be a "successful" author (I put successful in quotes to acknowledge that it is a socially-constructed, other-oriented, mindstuff, bullshit-comparison-to-others concept with no real meaning). Which I appreciate a lot!

So, a heartfelt thanks for reading my posts! All joy and honor to you, fellow bloggers.