Is It Really Better to Burn Out Than to Fade Away?

As this blog approaches its tenth year anniversary—hard to believe, that—I have to ask if this blogger is approaching his burn out point.

I've let WoW fade away since that last burst of analytic anger about the colossal clusterfuck of our last presidential election.

I feel so helpless. So right yet so unheeded. (Did you even read what I wrote?)

People suck. They're stupid. Easily gulled. Fools, all. Why cast my pearls of wisdom before such swine?

Especially if no one is listening.

What? A record for posterity? Ha! I laugh at my own pretension.

Maybe Twitter has ruined me for long form observation and reasoning. It's so immediately gratifying.

Maybe it's ruined us all. (Threaders notwithstanding).

My second novel—in draft—is now finished. It's completely different than the first.

No one will buy it. I'm not a salesman. Not a Trump.

The first is a deep dive into the soul of a modern man, displaced and disintegrating. The drama is mostly internal.

The second is about the rise to the mainstream from the underground of the late 20th Century of what we now call the alt-right.

(1) => Psychology/spirituality. (2) =>Politicality/sociality.

(The next shoots for Universality/allegoricality. But that's another story. (Haha. Pun.).).

Much of my energies, I admit, were invested in the last push to finish the second book.

And, literally, the minute I typed "THE END", I opened another document file on my iMac and began novel #3.

It has achieved a certain momentum.

That tripled with my dismay at the foolishness of this country's politics and the seductive allure of Twitter has taken my attention away from you all in blogland.

Apologies to those listed and updating in the righthand column here. If I've not been clicking through to your posts, adding to your daily totals, it's on me. Not you.

All that being said, the future of this enterprise at WoW remains uncertain.

State of the Blog 2

This is my first post of 2010 and my first post of WoW's third year.

Lots of holidays this time of year: Solstice, Advent, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year (here in the West), Tet (later on in the East), chief among them—not to slight Festivus or Zappadan. That means celebrations, disruptions, obligations, joy, surprises, disappointment, family, friends, seasonal affective disorder, loneliness, cold weather and decreased daylight (in the northern hemisphere), reminiscence, hope, despair—lots of things to lots of people.

WoW is also celebrating its two year anniversary (12/22). Wow! Just Wow! Who knew I could sustain this thing this long? I certainly didn't anticipate it.

A few quick facts: my first year I put up about 220 blog posts and had around 25,000 hits. This past year I posted only half as much (~107) but received approximately 38,000 hits. One of my posts was nominated for and selected as a finalist for 3QuarksDaily's Best Political Post of 2009, a true honor. I made a number of on-line blogfriends and commenters, too, which, to me, has been one of the unexpected boons of blogging (thanks, all). I'll go on.

WoW refuses to narrow its scope. It will not limit itself to being strictly a literary or critical blog, or a political blog, or a philosophy or theology blog, or even a personal blog, or, for that matter, an aggregating blog or a humor blog; but at the same time it is all of these—and more. In this, it resembles its author—who, too, refuses to be put into a box. And so, expect WoW to continue to range wide and far: not all things to all people, but not nothing either.

Wishing you the best of whatever holiday (if any) you choose to acknowledge!

Jim H.

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And here's a few links to keep you busy until I come up with something original:

NatGeo's best pics of the year (btw: that cute little old lady pic was taken just down the road from my son's high school!)

Discover Magazine's [developing] top 100 stories of 2009.

Wired Magazine's top scientific breakthroughs of 2009 and its top mobile gadgets of the decade. (WoW is, as usual, agnostic as to whether this is truly the end of the decade.)

Project Censored's Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010.

Media Matters for America has published its Most Outrageous Comments of 2009.

Talking Points Memo has announced its 2009 Golden Dukes Winners given "in recognition of great accomplishments in muckiness including acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and generally malevolent governance." Also, you can find TPM's Top 10 Cable News Moments here.

Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon at the complete review was very busy this year, managing "365 uninterrupted days of posts at this Literary Saloon -- as I apparently did in 2009 (there were 1347 posts for the year, an average of some 3.7 per day).) Only 172 books were reviewed at the complete review in 2009." Whew!

Rotten Tomatoes' Best of the Decade movies list. And here's Metacritic's Best (and Worst) Movies of the Decade. (WoW is absolutely thrilled to see Spirited Away so high on that list.)

Take The Pills compiles a 'mixtape' of best songs of the year that you can download. ...Noviembre thinks this is the record of the decade. I've heard it and it's pretty good. (For entertainment and discussion purposes only).

So, was this indeed the worst decade ever? It was certainly the decade of Bush. 'Nuff sed.

State of the Blog: First Anniversary

Dear Readers:

It's been one year since I started this blog. I thought I'd use this post for some navel-gazing. In that time I've logged over 220 posts, some long, some short. Some were link aggregations, most, though, were original content. That's a fair output—at least quantitatively speaking—for one person.

I'm not sure what my expectations were for beginning this thing: an outlet for personal expression, a chance to practice non-fiction writing with the constraints of (perhaps) an audience, or a forum for developing some sort of cyber-community with like-minded readers and fellow-bloggers. Most likely, it was some combination of all three.

Looking back at my posts, I do think I've stayed true to the purpose set out in the heading: "A blog about philosophy, theology, literature, politics, economics, law, ethics, culture, and any thing else that strikes our fancy." That may be too broad a mission to attract any specific audience; literary folks may not care much for politics and vice versa, e.g. But, for now, I'm happy being niche-less, generalist, broad-minded.

A look at the range of topic labels list on the right side of the page will show, however, that the majority of my posts have to do with fiction and literary criticism. And that is only natural. Lots of what appears here is purposive. As I work on my new novel, I read widely and deeply. My research sends me on tangents, stimulates my thinking, inspires my writing. It also distracts me from the work at hand. But now I have something like a roadmap of my own stream of consciousness for a solid year. In some senses, these posts serve as notes to myself. If, somehow, I can go back and look at them in several years, I'll see where I was and what I was thinking. Also, if I ever get a novel published, anyone who wants can go back and see the raw material of thought going into my art.

A quick check of statistics for WoW shows I've had nearly 25,000 unique, or cookie-less visits since the beginning. That is humbling. It is not huge in the Arianna Huffington sort of universe, but for some guy sitting at his Mac it's way more than I ever imagined.

I'm quite fond of the pictures accompanying my posts, and I spend a lot of time searching them out. I really enjoy how they complete or complement entries as visual puns or humor, or provide some sort of artistic statement. Early on, my biggest draw was this pic: Those clickers didn't stay for long.

Lately, though I've been getting readers who log on for 10 minutes plus and spend up to over an hour reading around. I'm happy to provide content; I only hope there is some wisdom to be found here. A couple of sites have even been gracious enough to list (and some have subsequently de-listed) WoW in their blogrolls. For those kind links, I am grateful and hope to be more reciprocal in the future.

Readers have been logging on from all over, as well. Here is a map from StatCounter showing where some of WoW's most recent visitors have logged on:

As for comments: I wish there'd've been more comments from my readers. I welcome them. The ones I've gotten, I've enjoyed the 'ahem' attention and tried to respond thoughtfully and appropriately. To generate more comments, should I try to be more provocative, more controversial? I wonder, too, if I should do less essayistic posts, less intertextual (self-referential) posts, less theme-blog posts, more aggregating posts.

Some ideas for next year: More music. Maybe some podcasts, some streams, some videos. I constantly listen to music while I work. Maybe I should share the soundtrack of my musings. I have over 17,000 songs on my iTunes and several favorite radio stations bookmarked. (One big disappointment this year was the crash of my hard drive. I didn't lose my music, thank blog, but I did lose all my ratings (1 to 5 stars). That's a lot of database work to replicate.)

I do plan to remain non-commercial: no amazon links, no paypal donation widget, no ads. If, on the outside chance (given the economy), I manage to get my novel published, I'll create a separate marketing website.

Thanks to all my readers. Any suggestions you have for improving this blog would be welcome. I have lots of ideas circulating for the new year and believe there is much to discover. Till then, though, I'm not sure how much more posting I'll be doing. Best of the Holiday Season!

Best,
Jim H.