hours

By the Numbers

Fandango27 Comments

From midnight Monday until noon on today. That’s 36 hours. That’s 2,160 minutes.

And in that 36 hour — 2,160 minute — period, my blog received 1,000 spam comments and 232 comments that went directly to trash. For a grand total of 1,232 bogus comments.

That’s an average of 34.2 spam and trash comments an hour, or more than 1.2 bogus comments every other minute for 36 straight hours.

There’s no way I can manually go through that many spam and trash comments manually. So I am mass deleting the comments in both my spam and trash folders. I apologize to any of you whose legitimate comments got caught up in these folders that were deleted.

I’m tired of this shit.

Rory’s Awkwardly Worded Questions

Fandango18 Comments

Sometimes when I read the various and seemingly random questions Rory asks, I need to rewrite them in order to make any sense out of them. Today Rory asked these questions below in what he called “Topical Tropical Trinity.” I am not sure why he called it that, as his questions are not really topical and they’re certainly not tropical. And since he asked four questions, I have no clue as to why he called it a trinity. Well, Rory’s mind works in strange ways. Maybe he’s just a fan of alliteration.

Anyway, here we go.

What prompts you to write about your favorite genres?

I don’t really have any favorite genres per se. I often respond to prompts — word or picture prompts — with flash fiction posts. I sometimes post about politics and current events. I suppose what prompts me most is my desire to write about whatever occurs to me or inspires me. In other words, this, that, and the other.

How do you personally define “fear” and do you think we should all live with an element of fear in our lives?

I suppose my definition of fear falls into the standard definition of fear, which is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.” Do we need an element of fear in our lives? I think so…at least a small element of it. Fear can prevent us from behaving dangerously or from doing something stupid. But fear can also be overwhelming and even disabling if it becomes extreme. So a little fear is probably a good thing, where as extreme fear, not so much.

How long do you spend weekly with your hobbies?

My one and only hobby these days is blogging, and I’d say I spend, on average, three to five hours a day on blogging (writing and reading), so 21 to 35 hours a week.

Have you ever been or were you a hippie? Do you desire to be a hippie?

Been there, done that. Yes, back in the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies I was a long-haired, tie-dyed shirt and bell-bottom wearing, marijuana smoking, and, occasionally, an acid dropping hippie. Now I’m an old, bald, aging Baby Boomer. So no more long hair (not by choice), tie-dyed shirts, or bell bottom jeans. I will still occasionally indulge in a cannabis-infused edible, but that’s pretty much all that remains of my hippie days. Well, that and classic rock music.

Time Is Not On My Side

Fandango45 Comments

3523B7DA-8078-42B3-B329-F067DDAFFAF7.jpegI wonder if I will be able to keep this pace up much longer. Blogging has become very special to me. Dare I say sacred?

What started out as a little ripple has now has turned into a flood. Just this month I’ve averaged 572 views, 175 likes, and 75 comments per day. Woo hoo! I am totally enraptured by those stats. And thank you all very much for your support and positive response to my blog.

But — and you knew there would be a but — there is a problem. You see, I want to be able to read and respond to all of the comments others have taken the time to make on my posts. And I’m now following 176 great bloggers, most of whom post daily and some of whom post multiple times a day. I want to read everything that all of you post, the operative word being “want.”

And then, of course, there is posting what I write, which is generally between three to five posts a day. I write flash fiction, I rant about politics and society (e.g., Donald Trump), and I respond to multiple daily prompts.

But the bottom line is that there is just not enough time to do it all. To read each and every comment and respond to each. To read each and every post that the bloggers I follow post and to comment on them. And to write three to five of my own posts each day. Something’s gotta give.

But what? Well, unless I can figure out how to add more hours to each day, or to get by with zero hours of sleep, I am going to have to cut back on the number of posts I write each day, including the number of prompts and challenges I respond to, and to probably pare down the number of bloggers I follow.

I really hate to take any of those steps, but I don’t think I have a choice. At least not if I want to stay married and relate to my kids. So I hope you’ll understand if I can’t reply to every comment you make and I can’t read every post you write and if I can’t respond to as many daily prompts.

Someone once said something about life getting in the way of blogging, but I can’t let blogging get in the way of life. I’ll try to keep up as best I can, but you might start to see and hear a little less from me as the year draws to a close. Still, I hope you’ll stick around.

Written for these one-word prompts: Scotts Daily Prompt (keep), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (special), Your Daily Word Prompt (sacred), Ragtag Daily Prompt (ripple), and Word of the Day Challenge (enrapture).

Blog Snobbery

Fandango22 Comments

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Sandi over at Flip Flops Every Day wrote a post yesterday called Snobs in which she discussed, among other things, blog snobbery. I had not really given the notion of blog snobbery much thought until I read her post. Now I’m haunted by it. Thanks a bunch, Sandi.

“My name is Fandango and I’m a blog snob,” is what I imagine I would say when asked to introduce myself at my first meeting of Blog Snobs Anonymous (BSA). By the way, Blog Snobs Anonymous should not be confused with the other BSA (Boy Scouts of America). The BSA I’m talking about would never invite Donald Trump to address our group.

But I digress. I am a blog snob because there are certain types of blogs that I choose to not read. That’s not to say that such blogs are not perfectly fine blogs and that the bloggers whose posts are found on those blogs are not excellent bloggers. I choose not to read them simply because they’re not to my taste.

For me — and probably for most of you who are reading this post — blogging is not a full-time activity. In fact, there are relatively few hours each day that I can devote to blogging. Therefore, I have to diligently manage my limited “blog-time.”

Because time is finite, there simply isn’t enough of it to compose one or more posts a day, to read and respond to comments, and to read and comment on a bunch of other bloggers’ posts.

Hence, I must be a discriminating blogger. I have no choice but to pick and choose which posts to read and which bloggers to follow.

I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. I choose to spend my finite blog-time on what I like over what I don’t.

So yes, I am a blog snob, born more from necessity than from desire. And I bet most of you, if you think about it, are also blog snobs.

Let me know if you want details about the next meeting of Blog Snobs Anonymous.