Thoughts by Richard Bleil
As of the writing of this post, I have written over 1,300 posts on my blog site. This is over 975,000 words, and three and a half years of writing every day. I’ve had over 30,000 views, and currently have over 380 followers. Okay, I’m not exactly viral. But let’s be fair, I’m not an attractive underage female with a “vlog”, so I have well under seventy million hits. A couple of years ago, the proverbial “they” began putting ads on my blogs, which makes me a professional. A professional what, I’m not sure, but a professional. Apparently, I get credit for every click I get on my posts.
The other day, I discovered the ad stats, including how much I’ve made to date. And after 30,000 views and three and a half years of writing, I’ve been credited a total of (drum roll please) sixteen dollars! That’s right, roughly five dollars a year. I’m living fat and happy now. Not that I’ve seen any of it. They keep track of how much I’ve made, but only transfer money in blocks of one hundred dollars, so, you know, just 85 more dollars, roughly seventeen more years, and I’ll get a huge block of cash coming my way!
Which gives rise to the reason for my blog. There is no specific focus to it as my post topics have been all over the place. The most reads I’ve had for any single blog was less than one hundred seventy (nothing to sneeze at). So why do I keep doing it?
Recently, a (relatively new) friend of mine discovered that I have my own blog. She expressed an interest to write her own blog (and I invited her to “guest author” on mine if she should so desire). She said it would be nice to be able to get ideas out of her head, and out into the world. This is kind of the mantra of my blog site (“too many thoughts circling in my brain”), but after more than three years, I do know that I’m repeating many of my stories and thoughts simply because I cannot possibly remember the topic of every post I’ve written. For what it’s worth, they’re always new when I write them, so hopefully while the topics might be very similar, each post is unique and perhaps may even reflect my evolving opinions.
Actually, that was a source of conversation with a different friend of mine. I expressed concern that I’m repeating myself (unintentionally), to which he replied at after so many years, and so many posts, if I can’t remember everything that I’ve written, there is no way anybody else will. But if you, my dedicated reader, starts thinking that some of my topics are repeats, you’re not wrong. Hopefully, after so long and so many posts, you still find it interesting and at least relatively fresh, and if you don’t always agree with my opinion, I hope it gives you something to think about.
My desire has never been to sway opinion, but what I’ve never wanted to do is just express opinion without reason. There are too many people ready to (angrily) express their point of view, denigrating anybody who disagrees with them, without ever providing the reason behind the beliefs they hold so near and dear. Recently, I wrote a blog that I think probably irritated people on both sides of the political spectrum, conservatives as I suggested the Trump is guilty of sedition (at the very least), and liberals because I stood opposed to turning the findings of the January 6 investigation into a prime-time drive for votes. But I hope in that blog I at least provided the reasons for my beliefs and gave people a reason to at least consider what I was saying. Besides, if your work doesn’t make anybody angry, is there even a point to it?
Well, my main point was not originally to anger people, but there were some blogs that I hope at least made people a little bit uncomfortable. Sometimes the point was to make my readers smile or even laugh, and yes, I’ve written posts intended to just frighten people. I don’t know what the reason is for my loyal readers to keep returning, but I do hope that you continue to find value in reading my work. I truly appreciate you all, whether you’ve read most of my blogs, or just read one title and moved on. And, yes, I truly appreciate your helping me accumulate the whopping sixteen dollar credit that I’m sitting on.
Bleil's Banter 