A New Start
Right? This feels like an improvement, doesn’t it?
It used to be that I’d write the entire update on the evening that I posted it. Nowadays I chip away at updates over the course of the week, adding to them bit by bit as inspiration strikes, and then sit down sometime on Sunday to try and pull together all of my different opinions from the week into one cohesive update. This system works for me because it doesn’t require me to think all that hard until the very end of the process.
When I created the old blog I was just looking for an online repository for dick jokes and the Dave Barry-style comedy I was doing at the time, so the silly name and primitive layout kind of made sense. It was like saying, “I’m not taking this all that seriously, and neither should you.” But in recent years, as the dick jokes have tapered off and the social and political commentary has ratcheted up, now I actually am taking this seriously. It’s past time I start posting my work in a space that makes it easier for other people to take it seriously too.
The wraparound is getting a facelift, but the content itself isn’t going to change that much. I’m not going to start writing shorter, more digestible updates. I’m not branching out into gif-based listicles the way less reputable outlets like BuzzFeed and the House Judiciary Committee have. I’m not going to start superimposing the text of my updates over pictures of Taylor Swift and SnapChatting them out to my readers, no matter how many people keep asking me to.
All the barriers to entry that have held my readership at 30 to 50 people for the past eight years aren’t going anywhere. I’ve long since given up on broadening my audience – I just focus on doing work that I can be proud of. That’s definitely a struggle, but it’s going to be a lot easier now that my work is living somewhere free of HTML errors and a color scheme that causes clinical depression.
To those wonderful 30 or 50 people who have hung with this thing for this long: Thank you. Now you should probably all run off and update your RSS feeds.