Attitude Check

[Post on blogging. Early due to Halloween. List of previous blogging posts.]

How have I been doing since the latest meltdown and recovery [Hiatus & I’m Baaaaaack … With Camera]? Pretty well.

I attended a meet-up for bloggers in my area. I was told that I must merge my personal and blog Twitter accounts into one. That I must use Instagram & Pinterest & Twitter to drive traffic to my blog. That I must… Well, no. As I said in the mission statement above, until someone offers to pay me, I don’t HAVE to do jack. Too militant? What I mean to say is that I am happy with the blog the way it is. And that’s a good thing.

For me, Twitter is a way to create a moving sidebar for the blog. Of course, now that I have been assimilated into the collective [Newest], my opinion may change.

I think the meltdown got rid of the last remnants of commercial thinking. For 20+ years, I wrote what the nice people with checks wanted me to write. I wrote newspaper pieces, magazine articles, even a book to order. If I had an assignment for a new magazine. I would read several issues cover to cover, including editorials and advertisements. I would absorb and reproduce their house style. The first iteration of the blog, Back to Eventing, was targeted to a specific audience. Once I started writing for myself, I was still trying to anticipate an audience. That way lies madness. One cannot write for the Internet as a whole.

I have come to decide that writing a blog is closer in method to writing fiction. You write the story you have to tell, then you look for an audience. So this is me, writing my blog, saying what I have to say, then looking around to see if anyone is interested in reading.

Thank you for visiting.