Reality Me

Didn’t Make Michael’s List

Written by

Doug McCaughan

in

,

I suck! (concisely)

Anecdotal is out. Concise clarity is in. In these days of the Internet Attention Span, if you don’t get me in one sentence – two tops – then I’m gone. [Source, No Silence Here, Some blogs I like, and why teachers should be using them]

I’m going to have to stay on the outs. One of my favorite movie quotes is "Looks like Walt Disney threw up!" That’s Burt Reynold’s character Sonny Lawson in the movie The End after trying to commit suicide by taking a fist full of colorful pills, chasing them with a glass of milk and immediately spitting the whole concoction back on the glass topped coffee table. (and no, I won’t remember your name in two weeks). I imagine that quote reflects how many people probably see Reality Me. It’s like Being John Malkovich but you are in my head. This blog is not a news blog or a tech blog; it is anecdotal! Call it a character study if you like. News, tech, politics and such slip in, and sometime dominate the landscape, but all in all, Reality Me is a collection of my insights and my adventures that I share for prosperity, your pleasure, and my fun.

Oh, and according to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008, I’m about 93,000 hits a month away from not sucking.

Comments

12 responses to “Didn’t Make Michael’s List”

  1. Morgan Avatar
    Morgan

    Personally I’m not ever sure I could blog trying to please the masses. I do it for me and my friends, so they get to know me, to make new friends and to get the crap floating around in my head out.

    I recently was reading where Martha Stewart was giving tips on blogging:
    http://www.themarthablog.com/2008/09/how-to-create-your-own-blog-let-us-show-you.html

    And Perez Hilton was recommending finding a niche. Like you can’t just have a blog about what you want to talk about that includes everything, you have to keep it under a certain umbrella. I thought that sounded lame, but maybe that’s for folks wanting to make a living from blogging.

    I was trying to think of my theme: crafty atheist archaeologist liberal teen mother in TN and I really think I can’t narrow my scope like that, lol.

  2. DylanW Avatar
    DylanW

    I don’t think the mix of blog posts is all that odd (although I do wonder where you get the “grasshopper” posts, considering how many there are). Maybe a bit too political for my tastes on occasion. And some of the stress/anxiety posts I actually found interesting, because it makes me wonder if I’m not dealing with the same thing on occasion.

    I’ve tried to make my blog more developer-oriented, but it always ends up coming out personal because that’s easier to write, and it’s more niche. It would be worse if I was able to sum up anything without overanalyzing it to death–I’d certainly post more random observations often. And it would be much worse if I didn’t have other sites/forums to post on where I can compartmentalize my topics, too.

  3. Missybw Avatar
    Missybw

    Don’t worry, I didn’t make his list either, and neither did most of the people I read daily. And some of the people on his list are on my “Never Read” list, unless, that is, I’m researching the enemy’s playbook. So, I think it’s very subjective and I don’t think you suck. You, my friend, are the opposite of suck! You blow! Big chunks of goodness, every time you write. Yep, that’s how I see it.

  4. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    Morgan, awesome theme! Now we just need to get you blogging at http://craftyatheistarchaeologistliberalteenmotherinTN.com/ I think I would heed Darren Rouse’s advice before Martha Stewart. Martha looks to be link baiting. Niches are frequently discussed for “successful” blogging. That word successful bothers me. Too many people just success based on page views and/or comments without ever defining what success means to them. If I post and Cathy laughs, I’ve been successful. If I post, and can read it a year from now and relive the moment, I’ve been successful. I like what Uncle says, "Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you." Like you said, if you are blogging for fun, blog anything; if you are blogging for profit, blog niche (and blog/market 50 hours a week).

    DylanW: I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for someone to give feedback like that! Originally I intended to steer clear of political blogging since there are far more qualified people out there to speak on the topics. I have been feeling very passionate about the political scene in our country and am compelled to share my thoughts. I anticipate after Nov 4th, I’ll tone it down or move it to something like http://politics.realityme.net/ because I don’t really want this to be just another political blog.

    I’ve always intended tech to go to http://cfninja.com/ I bought that domain before blogging was vogue with the intention of building a community platform for sharing secrets about ColdFusion, helping CF developers collaborate, sharing code snippets, forums, and to create a list of CF freelancers that I could help channel jobs into their hands. It never manifested beyond the fuzzy ninja shadow image because writing software for yourself doesn’t pay much. Perhaps I’ll throw a WordPress or Drupal installation up on it and let tech posts go over there.

    As for the Grasshopper posts, well 🙂 I think this is the first one. I was a big David Carradine Kung Fu fan as a child. The grasshopper posts I intentionally leave to interpretation. They come straight from my head and are usually inspired by a stress, conflict, joy, or other emotion moments before being written (sometimes I post date them so that if it was written in the morning, it may not appear until the afternoon or next day). Almost every one is a double entendre. I have 19 Of Grasshoppers that never made it out of “draft”. Of all the posting I do, I probably derive the most pleasure from the Of Grasshoppers.

  5. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    Missybw: Thanks! I like Michael a lot personally and professionally (still wish he’d come back from the dark side and give Obama a chance). I was being a little wry with this post and intended not to type anything beyond (concisely!) but the fingers were possessed. It was just a playful poke in Michael’s direction. I know Michael looks in here from time to time, or at least used to.

  6. DylanW Avatar
    DylanW

    I don’t think the politics needs to be moved to a different site, I’m just saying it isn’t my thing. You’re not very wordy or heavy-handed about it (although maybe a hard-core conservative would think differently), so I can usually just skip over those posts. Then again, I will admit some of them are sort of interesting.

  7. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    I bet the hard-core conservatives see the Obama logo and just click away. I meant to add that I’ll gladly do more stress/anxiety posts! I just want to avoid turning into a whiner (which is easy to do!). I’m overdue on an IRS update but I’ve got to hit a milestone before anymore blogging today.

  8. DylanW Avatar
    DylanW

    Yeah… only reason I mention the stress/anxiety posts is every so often, I think I’m hitting that point. Well, probably self-induced anxiety more than outright stress. I’ve debated swearing off caffeine because of it (never try Mana Energy Potions–one of those set me on edge for a day or two).

    It’s interesting to me, because when I read about other people who actual deal with it, and it helps me to determine whether I’m being a hypochondriac or not. But I can see how it could also come off as whining to some people.

  9. Barry Avatar
    Barry

    Don’t worry – I like your blogging style (except when you start talk CF stuff that’s over my head after the first expression). I’m not going anywhere 🙂

  10. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    Excellent! It’s nice to have such great company!

  11. Rich Hailey Avatar
    Rich Hailey

    I read you every day.

    Obama stickers don’t scare me!

    It’s too bad that more people don’t realize that there’s more to all of us than our politics.

  12. Doug McCaughan Avatar
    Doug McCaughan

    Agreed. I hope Saturday evening overcomes some of that. The first few blogfests showed that we can all have a great time together and even like each other despite holding different political views, etc.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More posts