The Shame

Well, the unthinkable has happened. I have missed a day here and there over the run of this blog, and always made up for it the following day. I've never been so busy or so disengaged that I let the issue of filling this space fade that far from my mind, and it's been a few years of times that were not always so placid. I always managed to keep these interruptions minimal. Indeed, there were none for a very long time, but that has come to an end.

Here's what happened. I wrote something for Wednesday - an item about how good I had been feeling through the midpoint of the week. Then I just don't know what happened. It's true that after my post Wednesday was written and posted, a string of things happened. That night I had my first meeting of a new sketch team, which was exciting. The following day it was the tenth anniversary of my Toastmasters club followed by an audition, which was also followed by my first chance to write for Top Story Weekly as a staff writer.

Skip It!

Yesterday I managed to skip a day writing for this blog, which upsets me to an unreasonable degree. It is no longer as if I am breaking precedent, as there now have been several days since 2009 which have passed without a new post. That is still a pretty good record considering no one expects anything of me along these lines except myself. Those are the hardest circumstances under which to remain disciplined: when you know with virtual certainty that no one will know.

In any event, here I am today to get back on the horse. It seems an opportune time to consider changes. I could adopt a movie-reviewing format without costing myself readers. I have hardly any, and anyway I have been doing a lot of little reviews lately anyway. It's something I do feel enthusiasm for, and focusing on that would stand a reasonable chance of gaining me a lot of readers. I believe that people expect consistency, which I have always delivered, and a precise focus, which I never have.

Under Consideration

It was suggested recently that I might alter the focus of this blog. From the very beginning, it was my intention to let myself run free in subject matter, but to ultimately narrow down to whatever presented itself as the thing I was most naturally disposed to write about. That was now four or five years ago, and nothing really did rise above the rest. Indeed, a dearth of time and energy led me to relax my discipline of presenting true essays and instead simply write the sort of online diary of which there are all too many.

It was observed that I have an endless enthusiasm for- really, an obsession with- collecting VHS tapes. Why not, it was asked, write about the individual tapes as I buy and view them? Certainly, I could go on for some time just with the ones I have bought and viewed already, to say nothing of the ones I have yet to watch and those that I have yet even to buy. Other blogs given to reviewing movies there may be, but how many confine themselves to the VHS format in addition? I have admittedly only done some cursory investigation, but I can find none.

A Look Inside

Writing for this blog is harder than it used to be. It's hard to believe that I started it as far back as 2009, but there it is. At that time, I had considerably less going on in life, and relatively few people to do that stuff with. I was not trying to write anything but this, and in fact had few outlets for creativity. Now I work on short items for Twitter as well as comedy sketches and the odd song (although I cannot write the music for those, of course).

As a consequence, this blog has changed in some ways. Titles which previously were wordy and heavily dependent on wordplay and referential humor now are terribly austere and basic. That's not bad, I suppose. I would like to think that I have it in me to achieve plenty in few words when I put my mind to it, and I appreciate deadpan humor that is short on words but long on commitment enough that I strive to improve at it.

Hark! A Thing About Viral Marketing

I give no end of thought to marketing myself and my offerings better online. The brass ring that we all chase these days is the prospect of "going viral"- of organically touching a nerve with something, then having the initial wave of people generate a second, and the second a third, and so on. That's the dream, but it's so maddeningly elusive. Worse still, it's utterly capricious. You might hit it with some painfully-wrought labor of love, but you might also hit it with a video of a cat boxing a toddle.

I have not so far put a lot of effort into making that happen for me. I don't know that it's something that you can force, but the thing that you might do is to try and ride trends that are already happening. I don't naturally seek to do the things that everyone is doing, myself. I'll notice that everybody is churning out "first world problems" on Twitter, and contemplate trying to do the same. The idea invariably stirs less than nothing in me emotionally, and so I don't bother.

Two Abreast

Mostly when I write for this blog, an idea presents itself (or is unearthed through considerable mental struggle) for the substance of a post. After I finish writing, I contemplate the general thrust of the thing and assign it as appropriate a title as I have the energy left to conceive of. That seems like the reasonable and ordinary way for that to be done, but it is not always the way that things go. This is one of the other times.

I found myself walking down the sidewalk towards my building with a couple bags of groceries. A man was coming the other way, and there was no comfortably passing him. The sidewalk is just not that wide, even when the city is good enough to keep the weeds and trash under control (if in fact it is up to the city to deal with such matters). I thought that most people would describe the situation as being one of two people not being able to walk side by side, but I thought there was a better way of putting it.

The End Of A Year, Uh...

I seldom address holidays and special dates as they come. I'm more likely to ruminate on Christmas in May than December. Still, I couldn't help but notice as I sat down to write that this would be going out on the final day of the year. It's only natural at that time to take stock of what's passed and look ahead to the future (and, we hope, to better days). This is true even for those of us not given to half-hearted, last-minute crusades of self-improvement.

Strictly within the confines of this blog, I can say that I am at least partly content. I managed to write 365 posts, which constitutes a new personal best (up from last year's 322). I got something out every single day, rain or shine (and there was some rain). I can't say that I loved everything I wrote, too often turning out something half-baked or unoriginal for lack of time or energy. Still, I fulfilled my goal of disciplining myself into writing regularly, which I believe has paid off in other writing endeavors.

Dunnit

As I continue to write for this blog, it becomes harder and harder to be sure that I'm writing something that I haven't written before- that I'm covering a subject that is still unexplored within these confines. I have read of the Beatles that they could dream of something or think of something for a song, and wonder if they had really come up with it or whether it was lodged in their mind after hearing it from someone else. They would then do their due diligence before using it. I had to do that before writing about my jars.

I was sure that I had written about them, and preliminary searches suggested that I had not. Still I thought that I had, and I couldn't believe that I would have left the idea alone at a time when I am just desperate for ideas good enough to write about. The jars idea was just dynamite, so I thought to myself that I surely would have pounced on it long ago. Still, I was not finding anything about it, and it would seem that running a search for "jars" would have found a post about jars, Still, there was nothing.

Break It Down

Only by consulting the archives of this blog can I recall that I began it as early as January of 2009. If you yourself go back as far as that, you'll see that it was something rather different then. I was itching to write some kind of blog- any blog, really. I started it before having decided what it would be about, and the decisions I made on what to call it and what it should look like reflect that uncertainty. To date I remain unfocused, and probably it has suffered as a result.

Beginning with February of that year, I had a strong run of five months in terms of frequency. It would probably pain me too much to say what quality of writing I was doing. The latter months of that summer marked the inception of a lull which drew on for some time and was only intermittently interrupted by fleeting bursts of good intentions. The following spring brought an end to that, as I firmly resolved that I would write and publish every single day without fail. There would be no excuses if I got tired or busy or didn't want to.

"I Better Write That Down"

You will have noticed that no new material appeared here on the day of Thursday, May 12th. A persistent technical glitch from this blog's host resulted in no post being published. It seems worth noting that it was the first such day since March 9th of last year. I consider it to have been a remarkable feat that I managed to publish every day for one year, two months and three days (and was thwarted in my intentions to go on in that way indefinitely only by some manner of outside error). I am more proud still of the fact that some of those pieces were good. I shall now embark upon an effort to improve upon that streak.

In addition to today's previously scheduled (and already published) post, please enjoy now yesterday's planned offering as apology and consolation for the void unfilled by my words.

Feedback

I have mentioned conversations I have had in person regarding this very blog. I tend to receive from them positive responses or promises to check it out. From one person have I gotten an unqualified rejection, but anyone else who cared to share something that wasn't purely a compliment was good enough to make it constructive and accompany it with some mention of what I am doing well. This is something we learn to do in Toastmasters, and I'm glad to see that out in the wastelands of unstructured, un-academic communication, others know how to do it. The unfortunate thing is that when someone offers well-reasoned, helpful criticism, I'm unable to disregard it entirely. I feel I'm not too bad at taking it. It has been said that this is the case, or I would not avow it to be myself.

Phase Four

As I noted at the time of this blog's belated first anniversary, it has gone through a lot of changes. I established it on a whim, having no purpose except a vague desire to start writing regularly. For some time, my commitment to it was half-hearted, sometimes posting half a dozen entries in a day and sometimes going a month or two without a word. Seldom were any of them of much substance. In terms of focus, the blog could have taken a lesson from a shotgun. In short, the blog was not much to speak of.

The first evolution was consistent frequency. I figured that even more essential to establishing a fan base than being any good was being reliable. I finally began to live up to my original intent, and began publishing every day. I started by ceasing to post multiple times in a given day. Where I would have posted all the results of such fits of productivity at once, I now began to post one and hold the excess in reserve. That way, when my best efforts at sticking to a routine of writing every day failed due to lack of ideas or energy, I had something to publish anyway. This became necessary only on rare occasions, as the act of writing soon became as automatic as reading always had been.

Tiny Inroads

Regulars will have noted by now the implementation of a new commenting system, which I hope will prove more effective and graceful (those with difficulties ought to consult me forthwith). This has gotten me writing about writing the blog once again. At the time of my belated first anniversary here at the blog, I bemoaned its apparently limited impact, but expressed resolve to stick it out. I knew that I had some readers, but believed that they were exclusively people known to me personally. I take pride in what I've got here, and believe it to be a good and fine thing, but there was no evidence that people outside of my immediate circle were even aware of it, let alone coalescing as a following. This was something I was determined to change, and I have assiduously made efforts to do so since.

Whereas I once infrequently checked subscriber data and banished the hit counter for lousing up the look of the page, I have lately embraced both things (and make an effort to find and make use of other tools to supplement them). Checking the latest data has become a regular force of habit, and reminds me a bit of the population totals on Battlestar Galactica. I do it so that I can try to shape and deliver what I offer in an appealing way, but I do enjoy the process in itself. There's an emotional investment in the numbers akin to the box scores in the sports section.

Brief Announcement

I'm sorry to divert from the scintillating writing which is this blog's stock and trade, but I want to give full and undivided attention to important news regarding Vessel Of Knowledge: Corporate and administrative functions will now be transferred to a newly-created home office in Yucaipa, California. I myself will remain in LA, and there will be no change to the high quality of prose which you have come to expect from the blog.

Operating entirely from Los Angeles has been great, but it is a luxury rendered increasingly unjustifiable by the state of information technology. Real estate prices remain in the nation's upper tier, and we have increasingly chafed at the hindrances posed by the oppressive, archaic tax structure and the intrusive regulations imposed by local bureaucracy. This move will help to ensure the blog's continued financial security and stability, and thus its ability to continue facilitating my work.

A Belated Anniversary

I noticed yesterday that it has been about a year and a month since I established this blog. I would remark about how far it has come, but I respect and appreciate the small number of readers I have too much to lie like that. The blog itself has undergone some changes during that time, but none of them have been more notable than the ebb and flow of the energy with which I've written. In the big picture, there has been no change, and in terms of accruing any kind of substantial readership, this blog has gone no further than winning over a few people and a handful of automated bots.

These past thirteen months have been a process of finding the things I'm enthusiastic enough about that I can make a commitment to doing them. The wholesale removal of the features pertaining to my heroes and ranking of the most beautiful women are testament to that (and make me suppose that being 'Maxim' isn't in the cards). Indeed, I established Vessel Of Knowledge in such haste that it went online without any reason for being, so naming it was a struggle. I might very well have dubbed it 'Tabula Rasa'. Only once it was up did I set myself to the task of imbuing it with some intent or purpose. It came to function as a conduit for me to relate my thoughts and deeds. I have been conscious from the first that no blog of that kind realizes any aspirations it may be nurturing beyond those I have already fulfilled.

More Fallow

A raucous night out and more phone exploration, coupled with necessity of preparations for tomorrow's speech, oblige me to beg off for another day. A reckoning of my recent activities is coming, though!

Quick update

Due to a lack of available energy as well as a recently sustained thumb injury, I have not been able to write during my trip. I'll try to do so tomorrow if the opportunity presents itself, and will have some very interesting things to say if such is the case.

Notice

Recently there has been a considerable amount of activity on my schedule, which partially accounts for my recent prolonged silence. Just over the last few days, I have been in the company of improv colleagues on numerous occasions for reasons ranging from shows to moving parties. This week promises more interesting goings-on, which I shall endeavor to write about here.

Back In The Saddle Again

It's been a while since I wrote, but I'm still here, and have plenty to say. Very shortly, I'll recap the key events in my life since my last post, as well as offer my long-delayed thoughts on Michael Jackson. That will lead quite nicely into the alarming rash of celebrity deaths of late. More besides that as well. Thanks for waiting!

Baseball and show biz

The last couple of days, I've been at dodger stadium. Tomorrow, I'll be on the lot at universal watching conan o'brien's tonight show. I'll have comments and maybe pictures tomorrow evening.