Redefining ‘Blog Empire’- Intellectual Gaming

Originally posted 4-18-15 on Facebook.

I don’t know about your feeds, but mine gets hit a lot with “Build your blogging empire”, and when I click “See more” I get things like “Even if you hate to write” and “Even if you don’t have time.” Basically, you can click to buy into a blogging plan now, promising riches and fame.

I love blogging, and apparently I’m doing everything wrong. I turn off ads whenever possible, even to the point of paying for blogs so no one has to see them. I don’t invite guest bloggers, and, I know this is ludicrous, I don’t encourange comments. Whaaaa?

I started blogging 11 years ago to amuse ~myself~. Blogging has gotten me through a whole load of bad stuff happening over and over and over, and I needed distraction to handle the stress. Word out there is that being savvy is about content creation, so- click into a plan? Seriously? I can’t help feeling the compulsion to point out that setting a string of bots in motion is about other people making money, and slapping your name on it doesn’t make it your content.

In my own eyes and experience, blogging is like intellectual performance art. I’ve noticed bloggers around me using blogs to dump their junk, police tape their political lines, and reshare other people’s opinions and statements (like we need another news feed in the millions proliferating like viruses). You know what? I want to see what you ate for supper, what your pets are doing, that nasty cut you got on your toe. Your version of how your day is going or the weird dream you had is why I’m reading your blog.

I love my blogging empire. Most of it is actually private. If I made it all public right now my reader traffic would go crazy. I would be the focus of so much attention that my twitter would skyrocket and my facebook would explode. So why don’t I go for it? Why don’t I spill and reap the rewards?

Good blogging isn’t about getting comments or drawing crowds, although those are sweet rewards sometimes. Good blogging has nothing to do with how other people rank your site or whether you get money rolling from passing along other people’s ads. You know what good blogging is? Filtering out all the bots and spam that stack up your hit counter (auto-hit followers are so cheap to buy everywhere you go), cutting out the crap loading into your readers’ eyeballs, and writing. That’s right, if you hate writing, why in the world would you set up a blogging empire? That’s like someone clicking into a plan to set up a hit song empire and it doesn’t matter if you’re tone deaf and never listen to music. It’s all about someone else selling something and using your billboard as screen to screen sales while they steer customers along the information highway for you.

Content creation is like everything else, you either enjoy it or you hate it. I have refused to be paid for content creation for several sites for years because I know the second I get paid, I’ll hate it. Yes, I have days where I don’t feel like working, but it’s way easier working for myself at my leisure than drumming my fingers forcing content I don’t care about for someone else. I’ll be honest, I’m really good at doing that, and that is why the offers show up. I can easily fill 50 pages with content. So why don’t I?

Some years ago, someone got after me for wasting time playing on one of my blogs when I could be spending quality time on real writing. At the time I wasn’t sure why that made me feel so uncomfortable. I’ve come to realize that, while not exactly an insult to my person, that statement was a judgement about me as a person, since spending quality time on something I enjoyed and that contributed to my psychological health was a waste of time. That means I am a waste of time, space, and air on this planet, by logical extension. After a good think, I decided that nothing I create online has ever been a waste of time, because it was practice. And I’m getting really good.

Despite all the moaning on twitter, it’s actually very easy to publish. I know people who’ve done it. Your writing can be super crap and your actual hard copy books will still wind up in warehouses all over the world. The secret? You pay for the service. I think it’s a great idea. It may not guarantee sales, but it certainly guarantees that you’re a certified author. The only problem with publishing hard copy is that there are no take-backs. I can go back years into my blogs and keep fixing typos. Once a book is out there, I can’t fix a thing on it any more.

My blogging empire is my way of gaming through my day. I like making fun stuff for readers to find, lots of easter eggs and presents and pretty colors. I like seeing someone in another country spend a whole day reading every single public post I ever wrote and keep discovering all the reading pathways I’ve created. I like how my hits suddenly triple one week when I say one particular new word somewhere, and still no one ever comments, which makes it even more obvious that lurkers are enjoying the game, too. If I were pushing traffic through a blogging plan full of ads and other people’s curated content (can we say copied public content?), I would completely miss the personal readers showing up. I see you guys. You give me warm fuzzies. I love all of you. ALL of you.

I’m going in a definite direction. It’s not about making money, although, yes, that would be a nice side effect.

#aspienado is a thing. I am the first to hashtag it, the first to say it, the first to own it. Existential Aspie is something I can’t stop. What will happen? I don’t know yet, but I do know I’m going to be the first to say a lot of things.

https://aspienado.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/epiphany/

The Nerdist Wayfarer

(This update follows 4 previous posts called The Nerdist Way 10-3-12, Team Nerd 11-1-12, The Nerdist Wimp 1-1-13, and The Nerdist Score- ‘aspie spoonie Lexx fan on a mission’ assessment 10-31-13.)

Chris Hardwick published The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) on 11-1-11. I remember him talking about it, I remember being first in line for it at my local library and still having to wait for 3 months for interlibrary loan, and I remember finally being able to read it. I couldn’t renew it because so many other people had it on hold at the libary, so I played the musical book game, getting back in line on hold every time I turned it in. A year later I finally had a little extra money and bought two copies, one for myself and one for my daughter and her husband.

I asked to be referred to a psychologist in 2007 specifically to work on public interaction after failing dismally at maintaining what could have been a very lucrative public friendship. He diagnosed me with Asperger’s and depression and assessed my GAF score at 51-60, wondering how I’d been able to get a college degree and actually hold jobs. He didn’t think my social anxiety was as severe as I thought it was, despite my having shut down all social media and ignoring the internet for an entire year. I’m also not a phone person, and he worked pretty hard with me on staying in touch with family. During all this time he watched me plunge through complete disability and helped me focus on a holistic approach to my physical and mental health during a pretty miserable couple of years. In 2011 a doctor finally diagnosed me with diabetes (on top of my already severe fibromyalgia and lupus flare ups), and once I figured out that what I was eating kept me from healing, I figured out how to turned my life around and have been getting healthier.

One vital thing further changed my outlook for my future- yep, the Nerdist book. It’s hard to figure out a direction when you can’t even do the things you enjoy for distraction, but Chris outlined his path out of his abyss, and I basically followed it. I’d read self help books before, not one of them worked at all. Chris has a completely new and fresh perspective on how not only to survive but to thrive, no matter how bad the problem is. My own problems include a very glitchy brain, so when he said my kind of people are geniuses spinning wheels and what we need is direction, I was all over that book.

I’m one of those smarty pants that tested in the top 3 percentile in high school, got over 30 on my ACT, and dumbfounded professors with my GRE scores going into grad school, but I also experienced epic brain fail between a couple of nasty viral infections and regular autoimmune flare ups, continual high pain levels coupled with handfuls of meds, and diabetes making it all worse. My brain fog was so bad that it became part of my complete disability. Using my brain on the internet became akin to crawling like a worm on the ground trying to get somewhere. Trying to keep any kind of direction going in my life besides not screwing my day up going to an appointment on the wrong day was pretty dismal. I had no direction at all, couldn’t see a way forward, and felt so utterly useless that I don’t know how I even lived. My psychologist told me perhaps my Asperger’s cushioned me against the possibilities of suicide, alcoholism, and divorce, because most women my age become wrapped up in those three biggies, even without overwhelming chronic illness egging it on, but I was nowhere near being a happy camper. I was the glum soul writing lengthy posts on why happiness doesn’t exist.

Then he watched Chris Hardwick’s book change my life.

My psychologist ‘turned me loose’ several months ago. He thinks I’m doing so well that I don’t even need to check in. My psychiatrist has told me he’s cool with me not being on any kind of head meds. I’ve worked very hard to survive depression without meds, and I have to say it’s not easy convincing a psychiatrist, so that was a big win. My doctor is thrilled that I’m off the xanax and vicodin other doctors had me on for years. I was just as addicted as any Hollywood actor flushing their life down a toilet, but I had an excuse, right? Wrong. I decided I’d rather not go down a toilet and disappear. My neurologist says I’m still healing from years ago trigeminal damage during a nasty car wreck and I will keep healing as long as I control my diabetes. My physical therapists have got me mobilized, not just up walking around but doing full spinal core strength, which has been very challenging, but you know what? It’s awesome being able to shop for my own groceries. It’s wonderful not needing help in and out of a shower. It’s marvelous being able to control my pain levels with movement.

Because I took Chris Hardwick’s book very seriously (follow my story in the posts I linked at the top of this post), I am also rebuilding my ‘web empire’. This hasn’t been easy, either. I’ve been taking very tiny steps, but since Chris coached me how to set goals and then list out the steps to reach those goals, I have been able to build what looks like a lot of work. I have been able to find purpose and joy in what I’m doing, and now I consider this my ‘job’. I work every day, I love my work, and one day my work might even pay off, but for now, I’m very satisfied that over the last two years I have come out of a wretched black hole of hopelessness and spread my wings. I no longer feel like a dismal failure face planting on the couch every day. I no longer feel sad and angry.

It’s been two years since I wrote my first post about how The Nerdist Way has helped me change my wreck of a life into a more enjoyable day by day experience that I feel good about. I can’t recommend this book enough, especially if you feel stuck and don’t know what to do next. If you have trepidations about any part of that book, please read back through my series about it, and be patient with yourself. I know exactly how hard it is, and I’m here to tell you it’s all worth it. You don’t have to croak off alone curled up on a couch because you’re hitting dead ends with doctors and jobs and despair. If you need more convincing, check out my other blogs and follow me, not just surviving depression and chronic illness, but thriving.

Spaz– my spoonie blog

PinkyGuerrero– my personal blog

Lexxperience– my fandom blog

Surveypalooza– my distraction blog

Aspienado– my aspie/work blog

DuckLordsOfTheSith– my pet chickens blog

And you can always find me on facebook and twitter.

And very definitely click this pic to get the book.

 

 

Life as Social Media Art

I want to borrow a friend for this piece. My canvas is a rich text editor. My art is interactive curiosity. My impression is for the Social Mind.

As we begin, please to click this beautiful photo for original source.

We don’t often think of sunlight as something to hold onto in our hearts. Yes, this clicks to source. The few words there are intriguing.

We see each other in passing, leaving cryptic messages, like pretty puzzle boxes for others to discover. Keep clicking, these all click.

Opening some of the puzzle boxes becomes a delightful quest into the dance of the mind.

Some of the pieces are dark and sad.

Some of them are devastating, but somehow Vicki makes them beautiful.

Vicki’s courage bounces back into play, and even on the darkest nights, she finds people to keep loving.

But I come back to this one after I have perused the puzzle boxes left strewn across the medias like shiny little jewels in a lonely, dark forest. This I have seen before, in another place, another time, in my own heart. A simple beautiful picture, elegant, unassuming… and knowing all the things I know, it moves me to my own tears. Vicki’s art and poetry across the time and space of social media speaks to me.

~~~~~~~~

Vicki Addesso is co-author of Still Here Thinking of You

inventory

When I worked in retail, food, and hospitality we did year end inventories and audits. Scott’s work does inventory every year too. Just because I no longer get a paycheck doesn’t mean I stopped doing inventories. (I actually started doing farm inventories with my dad as a child.) Every year I do an end of year assessment to see where I’m at, so that I can better see where I am going. I like doing health assessment inventories because they help me make better decisions about dealing with allergies, migraines, and a myriad of other interruptions that slow me down. This really works because it’s way too easy to get into ruts with mediocre medications and sloppy nutrition. All you have to do is ask What was I doing this time last year?, same as you do about money. I think the reason it’s so difficult to stick to New Year’s resolutions is because we don’t really know where we are truly at *right now*, and we’re not sure if we’re any better off than the year before. We know it all got away from us somewhere in there and we slipped back into bad habits and the old routine, and then we feel like we can’t get out of the ruts we’re in because we’re running just to keep up. So it helps to write it down in a few sentences and keep it in a drawer to look back on at the end of next year.

Every year since 2004 I’ve been doing website/blog inventories. It’s fun to see how the traffic comes and goes over time, and it gives me a better idea of what people are looking for and what they like coming back to. I make some of my blogs easy to find, others I tuck away in little corners. This last year I’ve been linking my stuff together for the first time ever, so this will be my first overall look at everything I’ve got open to the public right now (and hopefully my only pre-sales inventory). Some of these don’t have working trackers, some have gone through broken and migrated trackers, and some have had excellent trackers from their beginnings. Because I like watching my numbers, I’m able to keep conservative estimates going about some of the traffic on the blogs that have suffered tracker failures. This inventory is for my own benefit so I can get back to work on my traffic projections since the big Xanga migration this fall, and to help me collect my thoughts because I’ve been neglecting some of my blogs so badly the last few months. Time to get back on track!

If you are not familiar with how trackers work, spam hits are automatically filtered. These are clicks from real people coming through links, search engines, and book marks, and duplicate hits aren’t counted when pages are refreshed or revisited.

I’ll start with my newest blog Arch Heretic.

Total views main blog since Sept 2013- 955 (wordpress tracker)

Top post- Are you a robot? 49 direct views 11-03-13 to 12-27-13 (wordpress tracker)

Oldest blog GrandFortuna’s League of 20,000 Planets
Total views main blog since Sept. 2004- .5+M (very conservative)
Top post- Lexx Index 11,877 direct views 9-06-12 to 9-1-13 (Xanga tracker)

Aspie blog Bluejacky: Existential Aspie

Total views main blog since May 2007- 19,504 (site meter, incomplete)

Top post- shop till you drop survey 5,727 direct views May 2013 to Sept 2013 (Xanga tracker)

Spoonie blog Spaz

Total views main blog since March 2011- 1,429 (blogger tracker)

Top post- Oh no you didn’t… 56 direct views since 9-8-12 (blogger tracker)

note- TheBloggess.com followed me on twitter for that post  

The SyFyDesigns.com forum and blogs have been a joyful experiment in live real time response to tweeting links that soared far beyond that into a search engine bonanza. I’ve been told by several people that forums are dead, but this one certainly saw a lot of real time response traffic for as little as we were doing with it, even without actual feedback on the site itself. It was very useful for testing twitter response, funneling specific traffic, and filling up my time with something useful while other blogs were down. It was also highly visible in search engines and resulted in my highest viewed blog post of all time on any site I’ve ever written for. For purposes here, I am counting only forums and blogs started by me there, regardless of whether I posted prominently in threads started by other people.

Total views on my stuff since I joined in January 2013- 63,492 (internal tracker)

Top post- This is your brain on JJ Abrams 13,850 direct views since 2-15-13 (internal tracker)

I have other blogs that I don’t keep track of traffic on at JanikaBanks and mRpl and probably a few more that I’ve neglected so long that I don’t remember them. Used to have lots more and a multipage gaming site that I built, but I tore all that down.

Now I’m probably supposed to go into some analytics but I got distracted playing some funny twit-addiction games on twitter and then got snowed under 300 hard and fast interactions and now I’m crashing at the end of a long day/week and I’m caring more about a cup of hot chocolate now than number crunching. BUT. If I recall where my projections were this time last year, some of these numbers are blowing me away because I didn’t expect this kind of traffic so quickly and hadn’t intended on the directions most of the heavier traffic has turned me. I’m also seeing that jumping into tying my sites together and spreading myself out across more social media had a big impact on driving traffic. My initial goal was to play with link gaming, drive a little traffic around here and there with link teaser styles. I’m still doing that, but on a more mildly exponential scale.

Looking at the numbers is important, but with the big blog migration going completely out of my control the last 4 months, I’ve been flying blind and I’m still not back up to the tracker support level I was accustomed to. I’ve spent the day looking at all my stuff and now I’m walking away. Maybe in a few more months I can look at it again and see how it’s going.

I made this way back around 2003 or 2004 when I was working retail.

 

The Nerdist Score- ‘aspie spoonie Lexx fan on a mission’ assessment

It’s been a little over a year since I came out about my real life and wrote my article about how Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way got me started down the right path to evil villain success, following that up through the winter and spring with a couple of assessments about the progress I was making. Over the summer I got scattered in the impending Xanga relaunch wind, but now it’s time to see where I’m at.

Last year around this time I had come through eight weeks of physical therapy for severe lower back pain and extensive nerve involvement affecting various functions and was starting to regularly visit a fitness center to build core strength. I started out on a NuStep barely pulling about ten minutes at work level 2 or 3. Seriously, that was all I could do, but after several years of severe illness and consequent weakness and immobility, that was actually pretty good. Over the winter and spring I managed to increase my workload and workout length and add a couple of machines, even through a lupus flare up. I did another eight weeks of physical therapy through the spring and added more workout machines, and then sixteen more weeks through end of summer and early fall where we were able to identify how I trigger waves of severe fibro lasting several days using certain machines, even at the lightest workloads and a handful of reps, so I was told NOT to use those machines (my muscle tone is quite excellent, thanks to the continual kinetic working out the fibromyalgia puts me through, so I’ve been commanded to stay focused on core strength, flexibility, and mobility). At present I am able to pull 20 minutes on a NuStep at workload 5 or 6 (depending on how I’m feeling) doing 20 more steps per minute than I could several months ago, and afterward tool around town running errands, carry in groceries, and then work on easy chores through the rest of my day. I never dreamed I’d be this capable again. I still have a time limit with the chronic fatigue before I hit my wall, so I’m still pretty limited to driving only as necessary. Once I hit my wall, my brain falls out and I make very poor decisions in traffic (any aspie and spoonie would know that driving in inclement weather or in the darkness decreases the time I have left till I splat all over that wall). On days I stay home I can easily brisk walk for about 30 minutes now, which is sweet since 4 years ago I was having to use a motor cart to get my shopping done because I could barely walk at all.

In the meantime, I’ve been perplexing several doctors with an all new thing going on, which I finally talked about at spaz: Agrajag. It’s still going on, very weird, but I’m hoping that the ‘numbness’ I feel nearly all over my body sometimes now (starts with my head) is just my nervous system going through a sort of shock from my pain level being so drastically lowered, because all anyone can agree on at present is dysesthesia, which I try not to think about as terrifying, given CNS lupus (but I have to keep in mind all the occipital, trigeminal, and cervical nerve damage I’ve been through, so this might actually be ‘normal’. I honestly haven’t known what normal feels like since I rolled the car when I was 19.) I still get pretty good pain levels that some people would probably think is a ten on the pain scale (the pain scale is objective and relative, this isn’t a contest!), but it’s so much nicer than my nervous system continuously screaming at me that I’m almost happy about it and don’t mind much. Still, it’s very ‘unnerving’.

The problem with this new sensation stuff is that I can trigger these numby sensations a little too easily by working out too much without enough rest in between. I hit a big wall this week, so I’ve got to back off again and let it all settle back down, because the last thing I want is an inflammation flare up in my brain (vasculitis caused by lupus flare, the brain is Nerve Central, as it were). I may be in the best health of my adult life now as a 30 year lupus survivor, but that doesn’t mean I can do whatever I please and get away with it, and I sure don’t want to find out the hard way! Now that I’m having more energy, it’s hard reigning myself in on days I feel more fantastic than usual.

So right now I’m staying focused on plenty of rest and water, good nutrition, yes I take vitamins and a magnesium supplement (no herbal supplements, I have allergic reactions to too many things, sorry), and staying busy with fun stuff so I won’t feel depressed with thinking about this weird numby stuff. There’s no reason right now to think this is a bad thing (it’s been going on for months with nothing getting worse), and I’m actually very thrilled I passed a treadmill stress test with flying colors earlier this month. Even the cardiologist couldn’t believe it given my age and medical history, so THANK YOU CHRIS HARDWICK.

In other assessment, my Lexx blogging has come to a standstill while I wait to see where the Xanga dust settles (as they call it) before I put more work into it, and my first book launch timetable has undergone a schedule revamp because the blogs are a mess, and with holidays coming and cold weather spiking a few problems for me, I’m just rolling with what comes. It’s helping a great deal that SnarkAlec Radio is keeping me on a schedule of sorts. I’m the kind of person who needs a schedule from an outside source to keep my own stuff on track better, helps me pace myself mentally and physically. It’s also helping a LOT to have twitter buddies so I don’t sink into an emotional lethargy being a hermit. If you’re struggling with disability and feeling a little lost, I really recommend getting a twitter account so you can feel like you’re part of the world in real time.

I still have really big plans. I’m contracted for two books to start with, have several more in the queue, have discussed a podcast idea with several people, and of course I still intend to build the largest Lexx film study on the internet. Takes time. As you can imagine I really don’t watch a lot of TV, but my fave shows right now are It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Continuum, Once Upon a Time, Key and Peele, Strangest Weather On Earth, The Big Bang Theory, Tosh.0, and I’m waiting for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary. Scott watches all the rest- The Walking Dead, Hell on Wheels, Revolution, Arrow, Grimm, Defiance, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Tomorrow People, Sleepy Hollow, and I’m sure I missed a couple. We both watch Person of Interest, Falling Skies, and Under The Dome. Scott’s shows are stacking up in the DVR because he works around the clock and watches only an hour of TV on weeknights most of the time. I’m sure we’ll catch up over the holidays, unless he gets lost in Legend of Zelda again. And through it all I’m still filling up my stack of spirals.

Oh yeah, one more assessment. I haven’t been able to read very well since 2004 when a virus first hit my brain and screwed up more nerve stuff with my eyes, but this month I flew through a novel in about 3 days flat for the first time in years without getting eye strain, and last night I drove home in the dark without getting nasty shooting pains through my eyes every time light hit them. I’ve noticed I’m more easily reading black and white on my monitor, too, so this is icing on my assessment cake. There was a time I thought I’d be going blind (not that uncommon with lupus) and even prayed to if only the pain would go away.

So in spite of how this all looks, I’m having a truly fabulous year, I’m enjoying so much more than I use to be able to, and I’m looking forward (pleasepleaseplease) to more improvement over the coming year. I think the key to it all is holistic health and psychoneuroimmunology, which I’ve been working real hard on. Years on pills never made me better, it only jacked me up enough to keep me working till I crashed completely. I think the question is How badly do I want to feel better? What am I willing to do to feel better? What kind of commitment am I willing to make? This year has been a real grind, 32 weeks of vigorous deep tissue therapy, getting my workouts in at the very least once a week but usually 3 times a week no matter how rough I feel or what the weather is like (I have to commute to a fitness center, I’m way out of town), keeping my shopping done so I’ll have good food to eat instead of junk, and definitely making myself do something nice or useful every single day for someone else. Feeling good about being here on this earth is crucial, and I have to work at it every day, it doesn’t come easily to me.

So where will I be this time next year? I’m *hoping* I’ve got the publishing ball rolling and my blogs all fixed by then. I have no idea if I’ll make any money, but who cares! Main thing is I’ll be splatting my brain all over you guys, a sport I truly love and get joy from. My long term goal is to make it to Ireland someday. Need the money and need the health. Working on it.  

I love this guy.  This song cracks me up because I used to be so medicated I was as wasted as anybody can get all the time. I’m clean now, no meds. At all. I’m biwinning!

And for the MerLexxians, thanx for stopping by!  Everybody knows when my twitter feed fills up with Bradley I’m getting through a rough day, may as well enjoy it!

This continues at The Nerdist Wayfarer.