rant | Lucky Otters Haven

I started my blog a week ago as a form of self therapy and didn’t care if anyone read my stuff. Or didn’t think I cared. But I admit it: I do.

I read a lot of other blogs here at WordPress and some of them have thousands of followers and hundreds of comments for each post. Of course I realize most of these people have been at WordPress for a long time, and naturally those people will have more followers and comments than a newbie. Some of them may be professional bloggers who have paid for SEO and know all sorts of tricks I don’t to increase the numbers of hits they get.

But all that said, I still find it frustrating and disheartening when I spend hours writing a post and then another hour or so editing and trying to make it look great, only to come back in the morning and find NO comments or even any likes.

I was a little afraid to post this because as a person surrounded by a lot of narcissists, I worry that I may be seen as a narcissist myself, and as I mentioned in other posts, blogging on a public website and airing your most private issues for the whole world to see is really a very narcissistic activity. Admitting you want more comments or followers is akin to the six year old who whines, “Look at MEEEEEE!” and “Do you like MEEEEEE?” I certainly don’t want to be seen as self indulgent and whiney.

But another part of me thinks it’s justified. All of us are narcissists to some degree or another whether we like it or not. We all fall somewhere on the continuum and it’s only human to want people to read the stuff you spent an entire evening working on. If I was just writing for myself, why spend so much time and effort on my blog’s appearance? Why pay for Custom Design? I might as well just put it in WordPad, errors in spelling and punctuation and and all.

My blog is my outlet. So I won’t censor myself except for a certain level of political correctness. I don’t like to offend people. Of course offending people is something that can’t be avoided unless I completely censor myself, which I won’t do. Political correctness is overrated anyway. Hell, it’s my blog and this is something that’s bothering me, so I’m posting it. It’s not like anyone’s reading my stuff anyway.

I do want to take a moment to thank Opinionated Man for his awesome blog Harsh Reality. His blog is very popular and its easy to understand why. OM gives fantastic advice to new bloggers. He’s always quick to reply to his comments and questions too. I’m trying some of the stuff he suggests to draw more attention to my blog; hopefully it works!

Patience is not a virtue of mine. Maybe I just have to chill and not worry so much about whether people are “Liking” or commenting on my posts or not.

I’m inviting others to share their experiences when they were new to blogging and let me know if they had this same problem when they started. If anyone has any tips for getting more traffic (though OM seems to have pretty much covered everything in his blog) please share that here too.

Meantime, I’ll keep writing regardless of whether anyone’s reading my blog or not.

“Sooooo….I hear it’s gonna be a rough winter this year.”
ARGGGHHHH!
I hear this every single year, starting in about August. It drives me insane. First of all, how does anyone know how rough the winter’s gonna be? Weather forecasters can’t even predict the weather right most of the time DAYS ahead, never mind for the long term. Flipping a coin would probably do just as good a job predicting the weather. Whenever people use this phrase, I want to slam my head through a brick wall. Why? Because it almost seems like a taunt to me, as if they WANT it it snow all winter. It’s also usually said by someone who has four wheel drive and fancy snow tires. They’re prepared.
Well guess what? I’m not.

Sure, snow is pretty and all, and it’s nice on CHRISTMAS because it suits the season and on Christmas, most of us can lounge around at home in fuzzy slippers and pajamas all day if we choose. Unless we’re visiting relatives, we don’t have to DRIVE IN IT.

I detest driving in snow. It scares me. No, scratch that. It TERRIFIES me. I drive an old car and my tires are almost bald. I don’t have four wheel drive, and I slide all over the road. For me, it doesn’t matter if it’s snow or ice. I STILL SLIDE. And that’s fucking scary. I feel like I’m putting my life at risk every day I have to drive to work when it’s snowing. I’m sorry I don’t have 4-wheel drive and new tires like you do.

I also hate being cold. Winter is incredibly overrated. Think about it: it’s cold, it’s wet, it gets dark early and stays dark late into the morning, and everything is dead and colorless. The only colors to be seen are gray, brown, black and deadly WHITE if there is snow on the ground (until it turns into black and brown slush a day or so later). After the colorful festivities of Christmas (which is barely into the winter anyway), there’s nothing left to look forward to until spring.

You also have to wear layers and layers of heavy, uncomfortable clothing that takes up time in the morning that could be better spent surfing the web, writing a new blog post, reading your daily affirmation, or leisurely nursing your cup of hot coffee instead of gulping it down. I can’t stand the itchy scarves, gloves that make you drop things, sweaters that make you look like you gained about 50 pounds, and hats that make your hair look like crap when you peel them off and sometimes give you electric shocks.

Oh, and there’s the cleanup too. Spending half an hour scraping the white stuff off my car windows and shoveling it out of my driveway so I can get where I’m going is not my idea of fun.

For normal people I just don’t get the love of snow.

I suppose I can understand someone who doesn’t have to work liking snow. They can sit and stare out the window at it all day wearing their jammies, or go out and build a snowman. That’s why kids like it–they get a day off of school. Most adults do not. If I want to see snow I’ll look at a picture of it, thank you very much.

I can understand why someone who can afford to go skiing every winter would love snow. But how many people are there who can actually afford to do that? Definitely a lot fewer than the number of idiots who smugly announce what a rough winter it’s going to be.

So I have one thing to say to you if you say those words to me:
Shut the fuck up and go fall in a snowbank.

I’ll take the bugs, heat and humidity of summer any day.