Receding Strait Lines

The waters recede.

Our flood, such as it was, is fading away.

The dam on the lake near us was damaged.  The lake looks slightly drained.  What waters escaped went in the opposite direction of where we live.  Even so, I have mostly heard of flooding on roads, not in homes.  That is a good thing.

Benjamin has gone back to school today, after two weather days.  There are still some closed roads, but not enough to deter school from opening.  They have runned out of free days to take - the rest will cause loss of other days previously scheduled off.  What with the changes due to global warming, they may need to rethink their days off policy.  They may need to move to an "act of God"  standard where some days may not need to be made up. Because I think this is going to happen more and more.

I have to rethink my non-accounting work strategy.

My books and eshorts are not selling well.  This is probably due in part to quality, but also due to incompetence in promotion.  I find it difficult to promote myself.  I am not good at it, and most of the strategies I've considered involve risking more money.  So, although I enjoy writing, it may never provide a way out of accounting.  This saddens me a great deal. 

Will I stop writing?  No, of course not.  Enumeration or not, it is a lifelong passion I cannot stop.

What I do with my writing time, a writing time I need to better structure, that may change.

I need to redesignate the time that I write, and the writing projects I work on, and how I market it what I have.

I spend a good chunk of my writing time preparing and writing pieces for this blog, The Strait Line.

But I have to ask - to what end?

I have well over 1,700 blog postings online.  I am adding three to five posts a week.

To what end?

I keep waiting for my blog traffic to increase, but my average traffic remains stubbornly the same - an average of about 3,000 views a month.  Sometimes it's a little more, sometimes it's a little less.

Most views are under 100.  Some are only around 30.  Sharing makes a huge difference, but people rarely share my stuff.  When they do, like my endorsement of Lisa Ring, or when I publish a friend's child's winning poem, I may get several hundred views.  But for the most part, no one likes, no one shares, no one comments.

I post a ridiculous meme, political or otherwise, the likes and comments skyrocket.  If I post a family picture, the numbers go through the roof.  I'm jealous of my own posts.

So, I don't know what to do.  The Strait Line is still a good engine for publicity (theoretically), but it is also a tremendous absorber of writing time.  I have to rethink things.

I'm not sure how it will come out.  Until I figure out how to make some money out of creative processes, I feel like a failure.  I'm not giving up.  But I have to rethink.

The Strait Line may recede.  Or it may not.

Can't tell yet.