- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Happy Anniversary... And Thanks For Reading
I published my first blog one year ago today.
I recently re-read it, something I don't normally do with my old writing. Frankly, it was kind of lame.
However, at the time I wasn't sure what I would be writing about or how hard the writing would be. When I started this blog I hadn't written anything creatively since the early 1990's.
Originally, I considered writing a blog focused on beer. I like beer and I like trying new beers, but I then realized that drinking beer and writing about it, are two completely different things and I would rather do the former than the latter.
A year ago, I also had no idea how easily the words would come to me. It's not as if I have an infinite amount of free time to write these blogs. Most are composed while watching TV at home in the evening, but I do have other responsibilities that must also be taken care of. And sometimes our cat refuses to share my lap with my laptop.
By my calculations, this is the 176th blog that I've published during the past year. That works out to be around 118,000 words. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? The average novel is between 60,000 and 100,000 words long, according to a couple different sources I found on the Internet.
While my word-count sounds enormous, my brother -- an English major who apparently devoured a dictionary or twenty and numerous grammatical style guides during his lifetime -- would probably tell me that with a little judicious editing he could shave that total down to about 1500, give or take a couple hundred words. He would probably be right.
One of the pretenses that I originally used for starting this blog was to boost the number of hits on Google for the search-term "Brad Hollerbach." When I started, that phrase generated a lowly 26 results thanks to the fact that I have an extremely uncommon name. Apparently there are just two other Brad Hollerbachs in the country, a fellow about my age in California and a teenager in Minnesota. The Google search results for that phrase have increased to 49,100 as of yesterday.
I've never had a particular "goal" with this blog. Most of this work has been for my own amusement and as a way to exercise the ol' noggin'. I realize that over the past year I have managed to annoy and possibly even anger a few people with some of my rantings although that goal has never been my intention.
However, that's not surprising since I do like to point out and poke fun at what I believe are idiocies and hypocrisies in life and in doing so, can rub some people the wrong way. I'm OK with that. You can't make everyone happy, so there's no point in trying.
I write what amuses me and if you like it, then great. If not, come back in a day or two and perhaps I'll have posted a new blog that isn't too lame.
Thanks for reading.
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