Where Can I Buy A Fortress Of Mostly Quiet?

People tell me I need to pay more attention to writing headlines that command attention and to injecting my content with the terms I want my blog to rank most highly for because these things will help me.

Well I keep telling people that having super speed, super strength and the winning lotto numbers can do the same thing for me too with a whole lot less effort.

Now you might wonder why I want a Fortress of Mostly Quiet as opposed to Solitude and the answer is because I am a curmudgeon and not a misanthrope. Sure a career in misanthropy can sound like it offers multiple benefits but I have yet to find an example of one that didn’t lead to incarceration.

People sometimes irritate me but not to the point where I am going to write a manifesto and blow things up.

Locks and Boundaries

Locks and boundaries make for good neighbors and lox and bagels make for a good brunch. Hey Shmata Queen, make a note of that for our next Sunday brunch.

Go back in time to a post called When Is Failure An Option-2011 Edition and you’ll find some of my favorite writing. There is some stuff in there that just makes me smile and not because I can look back and think how far I have come in three years because man o’ man have I walked down a path.

I always said I would dance in the fire if need be but I can’t say I am happy to have proven that you can pour gasoline over my head and send me on the elevator to the great fire pits below. Yeah me and my pleasant disposition spent some time hanging out with Hades, battling Lucifer and punching old Beelzebub in the nose for no reason other than fight or lie down.

But that was then and this is now.

And now is when I look at some of the posts here and wonder aloud about how much to share. Or maybe it is more accurate to say I have read some Facebook status updates that make me wonder what the hell happened to common sense.

Why would you announce you ran over a homeless person, are getting divorced or that you got laid at Coachella.

This is part of why I have had long discussions with the kids about whether they can have Facebook accounts and what they can do online.

I believe part of being a good parent lies in teaching our children how to fail but failing common sense with these sorts of status updates makes me crazy because some of these things can follow you around.

Virtual Locks and boundaries can be just as real as anything you buy at the local hardware store.

Bloggers Are Narcissists

Somewhere in the pile of posts is one about whether bloggers are narcissists. Is that worth ranking for? Should I care? I dunno.

What I am certain of is I like the ‘excerpt below. Yeah, I wrote it and yeah you can call it obnoxious if you want but part of becoming a better writer is looking at our work, both the good and the bad.

“Life is filled with wonder and magic but it also comes with haunted forests and scary flying monkeys. And the problem with being a semi invulnerable superhero is that I can’t always be there to fight off the monsters of the night.”

I am a big fan of Game of Thrones. I have read all of the books and am anxiously waiting for the next one to come out. Most of the time when a book (series) is turned into a television show or movie I end up being disappointed by it but not this time.

The television show has been outstanding. Game of Thrones is full of narcissists and sociopaths who all operate alongside some normal people.

One of the reasons I like it is because the people feel real to me. Real life isn’t populated with people who are just good or just bad and neither is Game of Thrones.

Where Should Your Focus As A Writer Be?

My focus as a writer is upon building a relationships with my readers.That is what Game of Thrones did, it built a relationship.

There are characters I love and characters I hate as well as some I am just ambivalent about. But the ones that matter most to me are those who have layers, who are complex and have shown some evolution because they remind me of people.

And my ultimate focus as a writer is to connect with people.

So Buffer can provide me with The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research but that doesn’t mean I’ll use it as anything but a guide.

That is because people are complicated and they don’t always operate based upon logic and rational thought.  Sometimes we make decisions based upon gut feelings or because the Magic 8 Ball said we should.

Which probably explains why my neighbor is mowing his lawn in nothing more than a Speedo.  I want a Fortress of Mostly Quiet and I want it now.

Oh and some bleach for my eyes. 😉

• Saved: Life, Writing