Talking To Myself

I’ve been tracking hits to the Workman Chronicles ‘Blog lately.
Let’s just say that, if I was a sitcom on the WB, I would have been cancelled already.
It made me wonder…if a writer writes in the forest, and nobody reads it, is he still a writer?
Or could the idle rantings posted thereon be considered an electronic version of talking to myself?
And if it can be construed as talking to myself, is there a 12-step program that could help?
Are there webmasters in white coats who will soon arrive at my portal to escort me to a padded chatroom?
It’s such a double-edged sword.
I simultaneously wonder if I were to write more, to post something new every single day, maybe that would inspire more visitors, while also wondering why I bother to put on a writing party at all if nobody is going to show up.
(Yes, it’s very “oh woe is me” in here today.)
I recognize that part of the problem is marketing.
Outside of the few nice folks who stumble in from my day job at the newspaper and the morbidly curious but kind who track me down from my inane rantings on other ‘blogs, nobody knows about this place.
I could try to buy ads on the internet, but that’s too much like being a prostitute’s John, where I have to pay for love.
I’m one of those hopeless romantics who believes there’s an audience out there for everyone.
Also, I’m a newspaper writer, which by definition means I don’t have any money for such luxuries as food and clothes, so I certainly can’t afford to gorge Yahoo and Google’s pockets any further.
A quick perusal of “Blog Explosion” or any of the other ‘blog catalogs out there explains that it’s tough to rise above the din of hundreds of similar sites claiming to be humorous. (On Blog Explosion alone, there are nearly 700 sites listed in the “Humor” category, way more than any other category in the catalog.)
My only hope is that I’ll become a posthumous success like Van Gogh or Jim Croce.
Long after I’ve died from an overdose of french fries and McNuggets, perhaps someone will discover this treasure trove of wit and exploit it into celebrity.
Or maybe a single stroke of the delete key will perform a bandwidth angioplasty, “killing my darlings” as Hemingway said.
In any case, I’m still here, howling at a digital moon and talking to the firewalls.
A caricature of the age-old stereotype of literary artists tinged with insanity.