About this blog

Well, I think its time for a post about this blog itself.  In the spirit of my introduction, I can start to answer the question "Who am I?" and "What am I doing here?"  It is actually pretty interesting for me to go back and look at that very first post.  This blog, like a lot of things in my life, just happened.  It wasn't planned.  Now that it is here, and I am posting on it frequently, a thought to what the future of this blog will be may be in order.

So, where do I go from here?  To start, let's begin with where I am now.  As in my introduction, I had a blog before with a small readership.  I have been able to duplicate that here.  I have a small readership here.  Actually, pretty small.  It isn't zero, but it isn't far from that.  Back in 2004 with my first blog, I decided that the process of getting a more substantial readership wasn't worth the effort.  My resources are limited.  I can't afford to make this a hobby.  It has to support itself, or I will have to abandon it.  The same is true today.

So that explains all the advertisements and so forth.  It may look like I am trying to make a fortune off this blog.  At the moment though, with this small readership, it isn't even paying for itself.  Much less paying for my time.  That leaves me with the ever present necessity of getting readers and having those readers do things that will support this blog.  If I can't achieve that, I will have to shut it down eventually.  Or, I can "mothball" it for a future restart.  That is an option, if I should decide to do that.  But these decisions aren't imminent.  I have some time to see if I can be successful in getting this thing off the ground.  It is still there, on the ground that is.

So, I have answered the first question of where I am now with this blog.

After answering where I am, then I turn to the question of where would I like to go?  That was partially answered above.  Basically, the first destination is to be able to survive as a going concern.  That requires readers.  So, this in turn poses the following question:  how do you get readers?  What brings people here and keeps them coming?  Naturally, its got to be about content.  The content has to bring people here and to keep them coming back.  So, what is my content about?  What is so good about it that people just can't do without it?  What do you get here that you don't get anywhere else?  Tough questions.

Let's look at a successful blog.   At least, Instapundit is successful in drawing an audience.  It is one of the more popular sites on the web, as far as I can tell.  I don't have the numbers for its readership.  I will definitely say that if I came anywhere near what it does, I would be extremely amazed.  Why do I go to that blog?  It is in my blogroll, as you can see on the left.  Here is a story that I can use as an example of why I like that blog. It tells me something about the future.  That is an area of interest for me.  Presumably, that is an area of interest to his readers as well.  Glenn Reynold's blog is certainly good at finding and reporting stuff like this.  I use it for a lot of ideas that I post about here.  This is one of the examples of why I go there.  Another is politics.  He is somewhere on the right politically.  I tend to agree with that point of view.  But I don't go there just because I agree with his politics in a general sense.  That's because I go to sites on the left too.

That brings me to philosophy.  I go to left-wing sites because I think the right is not always right.  And the left is not always wrong.  It take a lot of arrogance to think you are always right and your opponent is always wrong.  You can certainly learn things from your opponents.  By being arrogant, you definitely run the risk of being blind to something that you should know about.  I hope by sharing these thoughts that I can impart a little homespun wisdom.  This wisdom was obtained from that old fashioned school of Hard Knocks.  Maybe that is a reason to come to this blog, huh?

Not that you should listen to every old fart like me who spouts his mouth off every now and then.  Hopefully, I can be smarter than the average old fart.  Maybe people ought to be paying attention.  Or maybe not.  Like the saying goes, there no fool like an old fool.  I am trying hard not to be a fool, but sometimes that can't be helped.  Let's see if I can help that this time.

Well, that's two reasons to come here.  To recap: 1) I think I can provide thoughts about the future that can be useful  and 2) I am an older guy who may have some useful wisdom to impart because of experience.

Any other reasons?  Integrity.  I remember when I was in high school, one of my teachers said something that has stuck with me ever since.  His name?  Mr. Durham.  He taught high school physics.  Anyway, what he said was this:  "Don't ever lose your integrity.  Once you've lost it, you may never get it back."  I took this homespun wisdom to heart.  I do my best to live my life on the highest possible level of integrity.  I will attempt to be truthful at all times.   I know that this is sometimes a challenge.  There is the ever present tendency to lie when it is convenient.  Anybody, including me, who says they never lie is immediately suspect. I will only say that I try not to.  So by saying so, I hope that I can gain your trust.  I hope that you will believe me because I don't want to lie to anybody.  But the world is a harsh place.  There is an old Mexican proverb that goes like this:  "Only fools and children tell the truth."  I am not a child, so maybe I am just an old fool.  But in saying that, I hope you can trust an old fool like me who won't lie if he can help it.

So there you have it.  Three reasons to come here.  Maybe that is good enough, who knows?  I am going to give it my best shot and let's see where it goes.