State of the Blast

Your favorite blogger (well tied with Ezra Klein, right Robert B.?)  is laid out with a bad cold, perhaps even whinier and more miserable than usual. I am back from a long day in the city and I should be laying down in bed, with a warm toddy and a compress, thermometer hanging out of the side of my mouth, nursing myself back to health. But I'm not, I m going to suck it up and write a post or two. Why? Two reasons. Because I care and more importantly, guilt.

You see more people than ever are reading this blog, this daily narcissistic rant and ramble. Twenty thousand page views this month, a tally I haven't seen since I was getting picked up by the big nationals a few years ago. Why do I care about letting down people who don't contribute anything more to my life but a page view and an occasional wry comment? Good question. I will let you know if I figure it out. I think it comes down to this. The Blue Heron Blast is a fairly large megaphone and people are listening. That's it.

I have regular readership from all over the globe, a bit weak in Africa but solid in every other continent. Blowing up in Mongolia. Now as you know and I am constantly reminding you, I don't get paid to shpiel. I write for its own sake and maybe so that maybe I don't blow my brains out. To hone my edge and reaffirm my so called native intellectual superiority.

My fifth year writing, an ascension of output every year 'til now, will probably hit 800 square on the nose. I could knock it out of the park, but why bother? A quality read versus so much fluff and pleasantry. You know what we deliver here at the Blue Heron Blast. 20k a month is peanuts compared to the big blogs. If I was talking about cats or crewel work, I could do that on a bad tuesday morning. This undertaking is a bit different and it is big enough thank you. Someday I will do a Bill Watterson or Gary Larson and ride off into the sunset and maybe somebody will say, you know he really didn't suck all that bad.

Somehow we have passed over yet another tipping point. 600 views a day is now a consistent 800. Why? I don't know. They can't all be cruising for porn. It gets more difficult when you don't know who the hell is reading you and looking over your shoulder. Probably have a nice fat little file sitting on some nondescript desk in the bowels of the Howard County security apparatus. Or so I would like to think... Anyway, hardly a week goes by that I am not introduced to a new lurker and I just want to say, welcome aboard. Glad that you could drop by.

Many of you tell me that I should be making money writing. How, pray tell? If you figure it out I am all ears. Don't tell me to write a book, I simply don't have a thing in mind.

The fifth year will lead to a sixth year, I won't put you through the annual I'm quitting ramble. We all know that's not possible. I am going to keep firing.

I went to a lecture by the best selling author Ann Patchett last year and she said that she never does any research until she's half way through the book. My new modus operandi. The Blue Heron Blast, in the words of chief Romney strategist Stuart Stevens, will not be dominated by fact checkers.

Thanks to all of you who have made this cyber excursion a part of your life.

Peace Out. Going to bed.