10 Tips on How to Not Become a Successful Blogger

As you know, I’ve been blogging here since 2007, and I’m still not a full time, stay-at-home blogger. Because of that I feel highly qualified to inform you of some tips and tricks on how to turn your passion for blogging not into a career.

1. Change Websites Often: If you want to not be successful at blogging, it’s important to change your website as often as possible. By that I mean full on switch hosting, let old domains expire and get bought up by ‘webcams’ (ew), and never pay for a redirect.

2. Delete Popular Content: When you have some popular blog posts, decide that they’re just not ‘you’ anymore, than immediately delete them. This will damage your SEO horribly, and it may never recover. With this simple tip alone I was able to go from 16,200 views one month to 4 views just a few months later. Just try to monetize that!

3. Write About Anything: Just anything that pops into your head. The way to not having a successful blog is to not having a consistent topic. For example, one day I’ll write about linguistics, and the next day I’ll write about dolls. Unsubscribe!

4. Username? More Like Whosyername: I find that one fun way to having a not successful blog is to use different usernames all over the internet. It’s like e-multiple personality disorder and is aggressively alienating. That way no one will know who you are and if the things you’re posting are actually by you or someone else.

The Side Effects of Being Vegetarian

I’ve been vegetarian full time for three years this December, and if you decide to transition to being a vegetarian, there are some things to look out for that no one really tells you. I have not seen this list on the internet, but this is all from my own experience. For the record, I’m not judging anyone who isn’t vegetarian, or saying you have to be vegetarian, etc. I’m also not a dietician, so don’t confuse this with medical advice, which it ain’t. Also, I’m going to talk about poop now, so you’ve been warned.

Immediately

Everybody poops, we know this, but when you first become vegetarian your body might mildly freak out. A lot of people take this as a sign that being vegetarian is not for them, but it’s really your body re-calibrating. You will have to tough it out on the toilet for a bit, I’m sorry to say. Things should stabilize within 6 months to a year as all the rotten meat gumming up your guts finally leaves your system. As a vegetarian you will poop more often, once to twice a day, and the poops with be bigger. When you eat meat you can have those horrid rabbit poops, you know that I’m talking about, but being veg will pretty much eliminate that. Gentlemen: I don’t know why the hell it takes you 20 minutes to poop, but as a vegetarian you will poop as fast as women do. Maybe you’re all just playing on your phones in there, I have never been able to crack that particular code.

3-6 Months

Within three months your craving for meat will stop completely. Around this time your will also have the worst breakout of your life. The meat nasties that have been stored in your flesh are finally seeping out, and it ain’t pretty. I had a second horrible breakout around six months as well, and after that they ended. Happily, your poops should start to stabilize around this time too.

6-12 Months

Something really strange happens when you stop eating meat, and it takes a while. Meat starts to stink. We’ve all walked into restaurants and smelled all the yummy smells, our bellies grumbling. As you get into vegetarianism as a lifestyle (not just something you’re trying out) meat will start to smell bad. What does it smell like? To me it smells sweaty, specifically like body odor. It smells putrid and rotten, truly vile, and it makes going to restaurants pretty unpleasant. Once you get to this stage your body really had acclimated and processed all the old meat out of your intestines. I can’t tell if my cat’s food is spoiled or not because of this; I just check the date on the can and hope the cat won’t eat spoiled meat like an idiot.

Thoughts on Social Media in 2010 vs 2017

Recently, personally, I’ve been struggling with the idea that everything I do in life must be aimed at functioning in our global community in a way that will allow me to continue living the way I’m living. AKA it’s all got to be for the cash monay. Harsh, yes? Totally harsh.

I was on World Famous Design Junkies (link to specific post now defunct, unfortunately) today and read the quote above. I’ve actually been struggling with this a lot lately too. I’ve just lapped a year of working at home, for myself, so I guess this is unofficial my New Year, a time to think about life, both the way I’m living it, and the way I want to be living it. Lately, I’ve found myself looking at my blog stats and thinking, “Oh my god, my stats are lower than they were yesterday,” and actually really caring about that, as if it’s actually important. It’s a day to day, limited reinforcement cycle, brilliant, really, but it’s like being underwater, when you come up, you realize that nothing you’re doing is really productive. At least not in a way that I count.

In a way, I think it has something to do with my age. I remember moving away to college in 1998 and having no internet access outside of the orange-text-on-black-screen email-only computers stations at my college library. The dozen terminals were more than enough for everyone who wanted to email anyone and there were no chairs, standing room only. I’d come home from class every day and work on my collages and zines, then perhaps once every six weeks I’d print my zine, give it out to some friends, mail it off to the few review zines that existed, and never give another thought to getting feedback. I definitely wrote more letters than emails and I think in a way it was liberating, I had no way to whore for instant attention, so I didn’t really want it.

The process of listing something online for sale goes something like: make item, take photos, edit photos, upload photos (private), list online, blog, Tweet, Facebook, Flickr, and LJ just to get it a decent amount of attention. It’s not really the amount of time it takes to do something, or the fact that you have to post it everywhere under the sun, but the reality that you might be putting more time into whoring yourself than you’re putting into actually creating.

– August 26, 2010

End of the School Year Slanguage Roundup 2016

One of the thing I liked about teaching High School is the direct exposure I received to the evolution of slang. I thought it would be fun to post the current slang and what isn’t popular anymore, since the olds (aka me) have gotten hold of it. I actually drafted this post over a year ago and just discovered it again. Better late than never? Well, that’s up to you to decide.

Current Slang (as of June 2016)

Gas – pronounced with a subtly elongated “a” sound, “gas” is a compliment primarily reserved for delicious looking food one is able to look at but not eat. While “gas” was a general compliment last year, replacing “dank,” it now is used almost exclusively for foodstuffs. Real examples: “That pasta salad looks gas” or (looks at picture of sushi) “That looks so gas. I want some!”

Heated – is still around and is used to indicate anger, it’s going strong, but my effort to introduce “pre-heating” to delineate the emotional space of growing anger did not take. Apparently, one is either “heated,” “getting heated,” or “was heated” and there’s no room for variation.

Lit – is a verb, (ie: “that party was lit” or “this party’s getting lit”) and has nothing to do with literature, much to my disappointment. Last year it was more clandestine and would indicate drug use, but now it has become main stream (real example: “that board game looks lit”).

Savage – being a savage is a compliment bestowed upon one by an outside party (real example: “Miss C is a savage”) and indicates that one is willing to be truthfully mean to someone. Sample conversation:

Student 1: You gave me an F! That’s not fair!

Miss C: What’s not fair is you not doing your work and then trying to blame me.

Student 2: Ooooooh! Miss C’s a savage!

Generally the party “being savaged” with recognize the validity of the critique, thus differentiating it from rudeness. Additionally, it is always done to the party’s face and is not considered gossip or ‘trash talk,’ what makes someone “savage” is the ability to tell the (often unkind) truth, to concerned parties, and have the party acknowledge the truth of said statement through silence. Complicated to explain, but very intuitive in person.

T.H.O.T. aka Thot – is an acronym that stands for That Ho Over There. While the term is well-seasoned enough to have lost its correct capitalization, it’s still regularly in use. Example: “Rachel? She a thot.”