100th Entry

I’ve been holding off on entries because I’ve attached an artificial significance to THIS entry… it is the 100th entry for davidnunez.com. I guess I wanted to make sure that I gave it the “appropriate attention” it deserved. So I went back and reread everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that I wrote so far… I was looking for a pattern, an insight… something.

This is what I came up with.100 Entries. Wow. A little bit here and a little bit there adds up, I guess.

There’s nothing special about the number 100. In the greater scheme of things, it’s no different than 99 or 101. Still, there is something magical about that exponent of ten ticking up one. It’s a milestone, I guess. I don’t think I had any doubts I would make it this far. 1000 seems like a much deeper committment. If I could just make it to 1000, then I’ll have something to be proud of. After that, I’ll look forward to adding another zero behind the one. At some point, and probably sooner than I think, I will have pushed the next milestone out way too far for me ever to reach.

Nevertheless, that’s the hamster wheel I’ve climbed on. Little by little, right?

To me, 100 sounds like a lot at first blush, but I think that number pales in comparison to the amount of material created by some people who have been at this a lot longer than me. Furthermore, many entries have been short, casual, passing thoughts… Not too much of a time committment there, a few minutes and then done.

Certain stories have taken much longer- hours, even. The design of the site and the meta-activity around maintaining and updating the system took another large chunk of my time.

Yet, I think my experiment has only just begun. The results are pretty inconclusive.

When I objectively look back, I have noticed that my writing, in the past few weeks especially, has been a little less personal than I originally hoped it could be. I think it’s a function of being more busy as my work and home responsibilities increase. It’s hard to find the time to sit and get in that emotional place where honest, open writing flows forth naturally.

I also think that my lapses in deeper writing has to do with my realizing that I’m being visited by complete strangers who remain anonymous. Ever since I made the switch to a server beyond my control, I don’t really check the logs that often. Every couple of weeks or so, I scan the log summary and see that the number of “unique hosts” (i.e. unique visitors) is growing very rapidly. I also see that google and other search engines have been indexing my blog (hence ensuring that whatever I write will stick around a little longer than I had expected) and that people have been finding my site as the result of searches.

I’d like to start telling more about what’s going on with me personally… I’m not sure I know what that will take.

Knowing there are more and more people viewing the site, I’m a little disappointed with the lack of comments I see. I also don’t know how many of my visitors are repeat customers. So I’m lacking in feedback on how I’m doing(assuming I consider readership a measure of my success).

It IS a little disappointing to write something for a few hours and have little or no responses to the effort.

Those are the breaks, I guess… the nature of this beast. I have to decide whether or not I’m writing to get a few compliments or to tell good stories or to be reflective or whatever…

There are times when I write to be solely entertaining- to pander to the audience which I know is reading and to the audience which I hope I can convince to stick around.

I like to think a lot of it is funny. I never really know if it’s the case unless one of my friends lets me know I’ve done ok. Nothing worse than someone trying to hard to be funny… So I just write.

Sometimes in the past, I’ve written some things in email, or whatever, and I was shocked to find out that my friends laughed their eyeballs out of their sockets at what I wrote. Erick told me that when I’m on, my writing style compares to a toned down, much more down to earth Dennis Miller. That’s a huge compliment coming from Erick; Erick has encouraged me to consider compiling my short stories into a book of some sort, even.

What makes it especially weird is that I know I am an absolutely TERRIBLE vocal storyteller. I have an awful habit of building up to a story with zero or disappointing punchlines… Erick, a friend I admire for lots of reasons, has the ability to tell stories over the phone that literally have me doubled over laughing out of control on the floor… On the rare occassions when I make someone crack up like that, I don’t realize I’m being so funny.

I guess that’s ok. If I get too calculated then it just becomes sad.

I think I can’t tell a good story live because I don’t have the option of editing the output. Of course, it takes a lot of effort (rewriting and such) to get a good story out of me. I’ll take a few hours to put something like the Scorpion story together. I’ll reread it again and again and change it dramatically multiple times before I send it out. I’ll mix fiction and truth liberally if I think it becomes more interesting.

That’s an interesting point. I don’t really make it explicit when I’m telling an embellished story based on a thin vein of truth. I’m hoping my writing style makes it’s clear when I’m entertaining vs. when I’m simply relating and documenting what really happened.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I’d like to do a lot more of the story-style of writing. It’ll take more of a committment to do that consistently, but I think the payoff is a little more substantial.

I think it’s obvious now that if I just focus on the stories, the rewards will eventually surface. I probably don’t deserve them yet. Let’s see what happens after I put together a few more of ’em.

At the rate I’m going, I think my one year blog anniversary will probably come before 1000 entries. One year seems like the next logical place to reflect on this experiment again. Actually, not really “logical” as much as “sentimental.”

Where will I be next summer? Will I have made substantial progress on my project? Will I have made great strides at work? Will I be a more well-known blog writer? Will I undergo another redesign?

Will I even be writing in my blog anymore?

Will anyone care?