Blogging 101: It was the best of times, It was ... too long!

I'm going to ease back into this blog posting trap we set for ourselves, much like an exhausted Sasquatch would ease into a leaky roofed barn looking for a nice dry bed of hay to sleep upon.

(Hey, that's as good an opening sentence as I've written, even if the visual tends to be a little on the imaginative side!)

I took a much needed break from the Blogosphere.  Hiding, some might say.  I was drying up and becoming much too cynical in my outlooks on life.  So, I decided to face real life without the obligations of the computer world we find ourselves chained to at times. 

(Bad idea!)

Even though it allowed me the time I needed to scarf up on fifty-four reduced pricing music album downloads Amazon.com offered over the Christmas Season, I was bored (as well as completely obsessed).  There were many writing topics I wished to cover, but I knew I had to start looking at them from a different perspective.  

(Then the bottom caved in.)

This past December was seriously one of the worst I've ever experienced.  Pressure from a day job that had completely turned sour, an attempted home break-in to give the wife and I much to worry about, and a general feeling of "I'm tired of fighting life's daily battles.  Still being used as your whipping boy, huh God?" seemed to be my constant companion.  Actually, even though it sounds as though I was going through a state of depression, I really wasn't.  

(So, the mind doctors have it wrong again, don't they?)

No, I was looking at my immediate life without blogging distractions.  I knew I seriously didn't have the time to go rollicking from blog to blog, and to be frank, I still don't.  The hours I put in one work week are more than most work in two.  Plus, my wife needed some of my attention, as did my cats (at least to hear Faletame and Gabriela state it ... damn, they just won't shut up sometimes), and my sanity believed, it too, wanted the sanctity of hiding in a roaring asteroid silently soaring through infinity (away from the Earth, not towards it).

So, I did what any supposed writer might do.  I took some time and evaluated my writing.  

1. Was it too sarcastic?  
2. Was it too truthful?  
3. Did I touch too many nerves and run some loyal readers off?  
4. Or, was the quality too rushed and content too negative for the reader to view the humor in that manner?

(And, to be blunt, I still haven't figured it out!

You thought there was going to be a divine revelation, didn't you?)

One major point I found when re-reading my posts with a third person point of view was that they were too long.  Longer than most others I've read.  Not quite the "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" product, but more like the rambling of a person unwilling to shut up and get to the point.

(You're wondering why it ever took me so long to figure that one out, aren't you?)

Actually, I've known that.  However, I considered it my style.  The jokes needed set-ups for impact.  Thus, the set-ups had to become a story to draw the reader in.  Still, the Internet doesn't give one much time for that kind of foreplay.  

So, as 2014 arrives, I have to make a decision.  Do I continue along the same route I've traveled and write long posts, or do I cut them up into several and keep things much shorter?

(As if this post was any example into the shortening process.)

So, in seeking answers, I have decided (without the stench of belly button lint permeating the air) to attempt to keep my posts much shorter.  No, I will not revert to using texting language to do so.  Rather, I will simply stop typing when the topic has been covered and there are no more worthy sarcasms present to exhibit.  (As say a teenage boy would do when his hopes and dreams of sex turn into a premature ejaculation catastrophe. It was good while it lasted but now it's time to go practice mind over matter control.)  

Perhaps this will help readership to grow.  I mean, if one writes, they expect it to be read.  If one reads a book, they expect to be entertained in multiple ways.  If one reads a blog, they expect to skim through it, leave a generic comment, and rush to the next one to repeat the process.  Blogs are not books, nor should they be the length of them.  A writer must keep this in mind.  And, of this, I must say I have been guilty.  (The blog ethics violators electric chair awaits me.)

Thank God Charles Dickens isn’t alive today 

to see the blog world in which we live.  

I can see his "A Tale Of Two Cities" transformed.

“Yeah, good times and bad times.  Sh*t, what do you expect.  

Know what I mean?  Peace Out!

France having bad stuff happening.  Hold the fries and sharpen the guillotine!

Old woman scared the crap out of me with those damn knitting needles.  

Let's ban those f**kin' things before the bitch goes crazy and starts jabbing people!  

No such thing as Politically Correct when you're head's in the basket!

The End ??   

(Hell, there’s no damn way!  I gotsta make money off the sequel!)

Tweet that, sucka!”

I was once under the impression that longer was better.  (At least I’ve had some relationships that was based on that concept.)  I was told "shorter is just as good" was only a myth developed for those lacking attributes of length.  Supposedly, shorter, even if one knew how to use it right, was never quite as satisfying.  

I guess that person never blogged.