Because it bears saying once more,
Welcome to 2024.
We’re starting off with a short post that I expect nobody will read. I won’t publicise it anywhere because really, it’s only intended as a reference material for when I get further into the year and can say, “I posted every day on the blog this year.”
So, I suppose the above is announcement one. I will be writing a blog post every single day going forward, just like the good old days. The reason: it’s the biggest ROI I ever got on an activity, all things considered. Also, I miss it.
But let’s not get soppy.
Let’s talk about the other announcements that are coming.
#1 Crazy Writing Challenges
I’ve started some crazy writing challenges. All of them will have their own separate posts eventually, but, in trying to return to online writing in 2023, I noticed that not a lot had changed. Everyone’s doing the Twitter stuff even though the platform is broken, it’s the not-so-daily emails with the same chronically boring cadence that got popular in 2016, and, most importantly… nobody is doing anything new, invigorating or, for no want of a better term, interesting.
And by interesting I mean in the sense of, “Holy shit. That’s something I’ve never seen anyone do before.”
So, I’m doing fiction writing challenges. Non-fiction writing challenges. I’ll be writing a huge amount of words for various forms every single day without fail, and I’ll be doing most of it in public where you all can see.
Which leads me to other ideas that have been brewing;
#2 The World Is Heading In A Fatal Direction For Your Individuation
If one of my writing challenges were to write the clunkiest subheading possible, I’d have completed it already.
Here’s the thing.
I saw a big name in the make money online sphere the other day complaining about how growing an audience is harder than it used to be. I’m not going to say whether that’s right or wrong for him, for you, for anyone. Instead, I’m going to counter with an idea that we’re going to explore on the blog and other bits:
Success is in creating your own legend.
Now, by that, I could mean all kinds of Conan the Barbarian-inspired statements about legacy and so on, but in the context of me being a humble, small-brained blogger, here’s the issue I have with the blanket statement of, “you can’t grow an audience” and its relatives:
Success in paint-by-numbers formulas for social media hacking or email marketing or whatever you want to say leads to its own demise, inevitably. You create a formula, everyone follows the formula, it dilutes and doesn’t work, (or a platform kills it inadvertently,) and the cycle continually repeats.
Every formula is subject to this law.
So what isn’t?
Doing something unique that other people aren’t doing and can’t replicate.
That’s part one of the new approach.
The second part of the clunky heading; the world not wanting you to individuate… let’s deal with that.
#2b: Outside Influence Is Addictive. Ignore It
While I’d argue that the goal of being yourself is in becoming yourself, the world doesn’t want that.
Whether it’s design, (that’ll be the overlords/archons/whichever political party you don’t like), or by emergent phenomena, (the mythical “Free Market” building addictive stuff that practically duct-tapes you to the chair and forces you to watch Netflix shows with LGBT characters) or simply that’s it’s pretty hard due to brain structure…
It’s quite difficult to become one’s self when it’s all out there and very addictive and everyone seems increasingly sad, angry and otherwise very trigger-happy in our curent climate.
For us mere bloggers and writers, there’s always the Twitter and the Facebook group and the endless reddit bots that want to stop us from doing the old writing thing.
And it’s very easy to fall into the trap of critiquing the modern world and how difficult it makes it for you to do anything.
I’ve fallen into this trap numerous times; and while my criticism is obviously big-brained and mega-accurate, I’d have been better served not offering criticism on whatever it was I thought needed fixing and, instead, forged ahead and made some positive change in my own life or in recreating the world in the image I think it should have instead.
So that’s what I’m doing now. Blog bits will entirely revolve around what I’m doing, what I’ve learned, and how much I’m achieving. Because…
#3: It’s Never Been More Important (And I Owe It To Everyone)
I took about three years off writing online. (At least under my own name – story for another day.) I was burned out from work, the social media bits became all very toxic and generally not what I wanted to be engaging in, and so on.
Yet people still messaged me. How was I doing, when would I be writing again, when’s the Vault happening, (Imminently, I promise. Just waiting for New Year’s festivities to end and get back to work and it’ll be up and running.)
That, all from a little blog where I just shared my thoughts and ideas, was very touching.
But again, not to get soppy; it seems everyone’s flailing for what to do, where to go next, and while I don’t have the answers, I at least think I have the idea of how to approach the problem.
And we’re entering into election year all over, where everyone starts to lose their heads anyway, so I figure we’ll be in for a rough ride and if you’re not into losing your mind, then you probably want something different.
So let’s go.