My View of Blogging (So Far)

  I have been blogging now for over ten months.  I am not the most consistent blogger.  I don't have time to sit at the keyboard every day and write an op-ed piece on the world at large.  I also refuse to write short bits, or just post a picture or video each day.  I like blogs like that, but I don't want to run one like that.  It just isn't me.  Now that I am beginning to pick up more readers, I thought I would offer a post on what I have learned so far about blogging.



  First of all, I am surprised to discover that for whatever reason, my readers do not post comments.  This is nearly universal.  No matter what subject I write about, no matter what pictures I post, people do not seem to want to respond with any kind of message.  I only find this odd when I look online at any sort of page and see people making the most banal comments on the most boring sights.  Go to weatherchannel.com and you'll see people comment on a plain weather report.  This will lead to discussion.  It will lead to hurt feelings.  (You think you got rain?  You wouldn't know rain if it hit you in your ear!)  I'm not joking.  People comment on movie reviews, obituaries, and sports scores.  And I'm not talking about Facebook comments.  Look at the bottom of YouTube videos.  There are lengthy talks about any number of silly things.  Yet no matter what I write about, most people just don't seem interested in saying anything about my posts.  Of the few comments I've ever seen, one of them was from a lady who asked me to fix the misspelling of her name.  That was an exciting exchange, I can tell you.

  I've decided there can only be a few reasons for this.  My kids have said that it must mean everyone agrees with me, hence no reason to contest any of the posts.  I wondered if they were right.  Perhaps it even means that I'm so spot on with everything I say, there is no point to add to what I say.

Now sometimes I see comments on Facebook, often not on my page but on my wife's page after she shares one of my posts.  Someone went so far as to tell my wife to tell me such and such about a post.  Now the only explanation I can think of to this revolves around what my wife calls my "murderous look".

Doesn't this smile make me look like
a six-year-old?

  According to said love-of-my-life, sometimes I have a murderous look.  This was told to me out of the blue one evening at a High School football game.  Now to be fair, I had just been standing in line to buy the food tickets that are needed so that you can stand in line at the food counter to buy the food with the tickets since cash is only accepted in the line where you buy tickets to buy the food that is not for sale if you only have cash.  (See?  You'd have a murderous look too if you had been subjected to such tom-foolery.)  So anyway, this murderous look of mine just might intimidate people into thinking they had better not make a comment on my blog.  Except I've been very careful not to post any pictures of me that reveal this psychotic side of mine.  (Though Jennifer did post a picture of me from Paris where she swears I am channeling Chuck Baudelaire, who always has a murderous look, or at least a look that tells us he is in intestinal disarray.)  Of the few photos of mine that I have posted to this blog, most of them have a neutral face.  I'm not big on smiling photos, since I have this fear that I look six-years-old when I display my teeth in a wide-mouth grin.  This is simply the consequences of being the youngest child in my family.  I still feel like a kid around my siblings.  I'm sure there's a pill you can take to counteract that now, and with the new Obamacare, I should be able to get a free prescription for it soon.  (Though this is said tongue-in-cheek, you can be sure I am not smiling.)  To get back to my point, I just want to say that I'm doing my best to appear approachable.  I'll try harder.  Maybe I could slouch a little.  Not make eye contact.  Would that help?

  Now the next idea I had involving reasons for the near complete lack of comments centers around my non-controversial approach.  I have been known, in the past, to be abrasive.  I have been told that I am messy, which is the southern way of telling a person he is an instigator.  We don't say instigator down here, since that would confuse fellow southerners who might think we were talking about someone who had been eaten by an alligator.  (You see, if you've been eaten by an alligator, you have instantly become a part of the...oh, never mind.)  In order to change this messy image I have, I have made it a priority to avoid confrontational material.  Frankly, there are too many bloggers and writers out there who are willing to stir the pot.  The Internet has spawned them like the spores from that Donald Sutherland remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I just decided that the world (or the Internet) doesn't need another rancorous voice chattering like a lunatic.  I figured I'd keep things nice and easy.  Pleasant.  Uplifting.  But it appears that if I am going to get any one's attention, I may have to get a little more mean.  If I can't get comments and input from my readers with goodness, I'll consider the alternative: I might have to start picking on crippled kittens or something.  Well, maybe just fat ones.  I do have my standards.  Seriously, I could be the next Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh, but why would I want to do that?  As I've become older, I have just lost the desire to argue.

  Something else I have learned with this blog is that people all over the world have taken an interest in it.  I have had readers from every corner of the globe.  This is thrilling to be sure, but it is almost hard to believe.  According to the reports I get, people in Russia, Israel, Australia, Brazil, Japan, and many other countries too numerous to list are stopping by Room With No View to see what I've been posting.  Now some of these could be spammers, who's programs run automatically as they search the web for various nefarious reasons.  I'm not an expert on these things so I don't really know one way or the other.  What I do know is that it is a pretty cool thought that we have become so global that someone on the other side of the world can read my views on movies, books, or my latest trip.  I'm not joking when I say it adds a layer of responsibility to what I write.  I'm not just talking to my closest friends.  I'm talking to the world.  I find this makes me take greater care with what I say.

  I have to finish now, since I am about to head off into the early morning darkness to perform surgery on my car, which might be tricky, since I am not a mechanic.  I'll just have to rely on my extraordinarily brilliant mind to get it right.  (No comments, please.)