This weblog made it into this year’s Christmas letter and that makes it official — my Mom might be reading. This brings all sorts of represesed teenage censorship vibe into my head. Well, fuck that.
As part of my Christmas Letter weblog blurb, I dug up some usage statistics regarding Rands In Repose. Interesting data: broke 1 million visits this year and am currently averaging 5,000 unique visitors a day which means 2 million visits is an achievable goal for next year.
So, hi everyone.
One of the natural maturation points of a weblog once it’s achieved a modicum of succes is the author thinks, “Uh, so… I’m doing all this work… and… uh… people are showing up… repeatedly… so shouldn’t I be getting personal gain out of my hard work?”
While I am truly fascinated about how some future entity will make weblogs a profitable business, I am not that entity. Something sinister happens when you mix the generation of ideas with the generation of money. You either become a business, a policitian, or a religious leader. This transformation changes you and, more importantly, this changes your ideas. You no longer throw great inspiration out for all to see… you carefully vet your ideas to see if you’re on message to gurantee future profitability/electability/divinity. I believe this process of idea quality assurance taints creativity.
While I reserve the right to have a brilliant idea regarding weblog profitability in the future, I have no intention of dangling Paypal donation buttons, Rands T-Shirts, or other scwhag to finance this weblog. I have money. I have a job.
Thanks to my NADD, what I can never have enough of, is bright new ideas. Brilliant tidbits of inspiration to bounce around my head… creating new wholes which, hopefully, are greater than the sum of the parts.
What I want for Christmas is more ideas. More debate. More arguments. More people vigorously shaking the finger in my face yelling, “BOY ARE YOU WRONG”. I want more sifting through the flood of information that is the Internet… searching for originality. As long as the information keeps flowing, I’ll keep writing.
Happy Holidays.
7 Responses