Oh No I’m Old! State of The Blog and Moving Forward

On August 14th, 1982, a teenager went into a small theater to watch The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, because this was the ’80s and what else were people going to watch? Apparently this woman laughed so hard she started having contractions and went into labor earlier than expected, and then had difficulty because the demon spawn inside of her had a head the size of an aircraft carrier.

It’s me. I was that – no, I wasn’t the pregnant lady, I was the baby. In some ways, I still am the kid.

It’s been 38 years. A lot has changed since then. The phone I carry in my pocket can emulate the very first gaming system I had. My very first computer, the TRS 80 Model III Microcomputer, has less computing power than some children’s toys on the market today. And these days, instead of blogging on Livejournal for free (plus a yearly subscription for extra icons!) I’m… blogging on WordPress. Which I pay $80/year for (hosting + domain). Who would have thought having an internet presence wouldn’t be cheap. I mean, I guess I could go get today’s version of an Angelfire or Geocities page, but I’m old enough to “do these things right.”

A lot is going on with my life right now. The world is crazier than usual, and I’m not just taking care of myself by my children, each of which have their own desires and needs. Doing what I can with what I have. It’s not easy.

I still want to get something published! Just struggling to make that happen. I have several open projects. Just need to finish one. Any one.

I am still going to be posting book reviews on here, but I’m going to aim for more positive reviews when possible. I’m generally not a fan of writing long essays about why I don’t like a particular book I paid actual money for. It’s sad enough I spent my time reading something I didn’t enjoy; it’s rarely worth it for me to expound upon that. But rarely isn’t never.

I changed how advertisements work on the website (shout-out to Hotpot/Nabe-chan for doing the heavy lifting here!) For about 6 weeks, anyone visiting this website would be attacked by advertisements like a pro-life protest in the heart of downtown. It made the website hard to view on mobile. Worse, it wasn’t actually making any money! But it turns out with a few tweaks the website can have advertisements in very controlled places, which means that I can have a better chance of monetizing the website and people can actually read the things I post. So, there’s that.

In the meantime it’s just working a lot, playing catch up with finances, and hoping eventually become published! Then all the people I wrote nasty reviews for can turn around and say mean things about me. THAT IS THE DREAM.

Seguing from that a little bit, what sort of questions could I answer for you, the 20-odd people who are reading this? You can tag me on social media, or in the comments below. I’ll answer them all in a follow up post. ^^b