Today was another fog filled day – the dog wanted her walk early and I stood on the bridge over I-90 over Coeur d’Alene, the visibility about 100 ft and I felt isolated. The day before, I spent in Bayview and for whatever reason, I was socially awkward, a weird form of shyness I sometimes experience that’s often misinterpreted as arrogance. I made a sales call which I failed to close – or at least left me with the feeling of uncertainty. So I replayed the scenario, what can I do to close better? I kicked myself around for some time, knowing I basically just had my brain picked for an hour and this is something I’ve done over and over again. A friend reminded me I am the one with the keys to the castle. Nobody works for free. Combine this with the fact that my wife is thousands of miles away, I had a blow-out argument with a family member, and I’m just generally disgruntled and the feeling of disconnected swelled into near despair. Of course, turning to the internet furthers my disconnect from reality. I’m disconnected from my blog – I’m disconnected from my art and most of all, it just hurts to write but my friend asks me, “are you going to write that article for me?” ”Yes, tomorrow – today was a rough day dude.” This morning as I pour my energy into crafting an article for his blog, I’m wondering why I bother – I don’t put this much energy into my own writing or at least I haven’t in some time. Many years ago, I was swirling in the throes of a deep depression. Life was just not working out as I thought it should. This, I’ve learned is the essence, the trigger, of depression for me. And something miraculous happened. I was staring at the computer at my desk in a dead end job and I was inspired – that’s not really even what it was – it was more like voices were talking to me and I started typing. I was just typing what the voices were saying and when I stopped typing and read it, it was a poem. It was raw and intense and you know what, it made me feel better. It made me feel so much better that I started to tune in to these voices and I typed what they were saying. A year later and hundreds of poems and short stories, thousands of words later, the dark clouds lifted and I broke through a major depression. I stopped writing creatively as soon as it broke. I stopped just as suddenly as I had started. For the last 20 years or more, I have written professionally every day but the creative writing was purely cathartic – a free form of therapy.
As the fog lifts over Coeur d’Alene, I feel less disconnected, isolated and depressed. Although the weather is only a part of my overall affectation, I feel better having put this down. Maybe I’ll turn off the computer and head back into society for a spell. There was a game of Apples to Apples going on at the Floating Patio and I sure would like to have gotten invited to play – but you know, I could have asked. And I walked right past my friend sitting at the end of the bar, wrapped up in my mind, creating my own isolation amidst a crowd. And the ray of sun streaming through the patio door is reminding me that I alone have control of my emotions. And I’m choosing to leave isolated and disconnected behind so I bid you good day and am signing off. The only communication with me today is if you see me face to face.
Change for the blog is good and surprisingly easy
You might have noticed my assistant, Otto has been doing most of the writing lately. Otto has been busy pulling the best content from Amazon while I’ve been out searching the internet for answers to less than philosophical questions such as “how can I increase my Google page ranking?” ”how can I get more comments on my blog?” ”how can I get a community of readers?” Well, I’ve been very busy answering these questions and launching new sites and retouching photos for clients and learning new tricks in Adobe Fireworks and trying some things in Flash and everything else. I learned a few things and now I’m thinking a change might occur in how I go about this blogging endeavor. Here’s my to do list:
Fire Otto – he’s a great guy but hey, everyone knows the deal with an autopilot – nobody’s flying the plane
Get out there and comment more. I actually read the articles and leave intelligent comments (because I can) and they’re bringing new readers here.
To encourage new readers and comments I have installed the dofollow plugin so they get credit for their link, I further installed KeywordLuv so they can use comments to anchor text their link, and went a step further and joined CommentLuv so their last blog post will show up under their name. The only thing I didn’t do was write a comment for them.
The to-do list also includes, cleaning up the categories, building anchor text links in archives, editing old blog posts and directory submissions. Not much fun but hey, if I don’t do it, nothing will change.