I missed the two-month anniversary of the blog which happened sometime last week when I was giving myself anxiety attacks over the Dominic Cummings story. Well, okay, “anxiety attacks” isn’t entirely the truth but I was feeling a bit Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men. I didn’t want Lee J. Cobb to shout at me.
Anyway, a week late, I get to keep on with these updates. I’m now up to 80 posts, comprising 49,318 words in about nine weeks. I have no idea how many cartoons I’ve drawn but I always consider them “added value”, with an asterisk next to the word “value” warning the buyer that the value might be less than a penny. I’m really a struggling writer with cartoons as a hobby. The words matter more. I am averaging more than a post a day, so I’ve achieved my first goal which was to keep it going for longer than my initial spasm of enthusiasm.
Away from the blog, I’m only struggling spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally, and commercially. I’ve been writing articles but also drawing new gag cartoons. I think I have 30 drawn (which I’d getting desperate to show to *somebody*) and a list of new ideas I have yet to begin. I keep thinking I’ll send some to Private Eye, wait for them to get rejected, and then post them here. I keep chickening out of the first bit. Maybe next week.
On the other side of the blog, my statistics have stopped working so I have no idea how many people read me each day. I won’t know how many people have read this (perhaps I’ll put in a poll to check). A week ago, I was lucky if I had more than a single visitor – usually a webcrawling bot from China which I’ve decided to call “Edith Conkers”. Yes, it really is that bad. I’m giving names to algorithms running on Chinese data farms.
[poll id=”2″]
I sometimes wonder if I’m writing this for myself and then I remember that I’ve always written these blogs for myself. The Spine. The Richard Madeley Apprecaition Society. Chip Dale’s Diary. So many millions of words… A life totally wasted.
I’ve never had much in the way of regular readers. From a free market economy perspective, I suppose I’m a failed venture. If people don’t buy your product, it means your product is worthless. Crap. Now, I’m writing myself into a familiar place where I feel like quitting…
Yet it must be wonderful writing for a living. Some days I think I’m good enough. Most days I feel the opposite. Writing the blog was meant to restore some of the confidence I’ve lost. I think it’s helped in some ways. In other ways, not so much. There are twitter accounts I notice where they repost really bad jokes or cartoons every day and they’ll have 150k followers. Totally baffles me.
I need a change of luck though luck is another of the supernatural things I don’t believe exist. The universe doesn’t care if one person’s hopes fail.
Crap squared. Now, I’m in a familiar place where I do feel like quitting.
I need a change of luck… Hypocritical of me, I know, but things are getting desperate. Help me, Edith Conkers! You’re my final hope!
