I have been trying to label all my blog posts. With over 2800 blog posts it has been taking me over a year to do this. I am not really sure how many more I have to do before I am finished. Doing this I have found a lot of broken links. Lots of the stories that I posted blog entries about are no longer on the web.
This has effected my writing some. I am not trying to write entries that stand up even if the person does not follow the link. I need to be able to write entries that always make sense even if the links go away.
If the link does go away I might clean up the broken link, but I am not going to find the story someplace else. It is not worth my time.
I was looking in the referral logs of my blog. Most of my search referrals are currently image searches. I used to get all kinds of crazy searches that would find Sad Salvation because of written content. Now random people find me because of images. I am not sure why that is. Have Google text searches got better? Are people searching for fewer crazy things? Are images really what my blog is about?
I am not sure if this is good for my blog or not. I am not sure how to attract people who have never read it before. I am not sure that people that do not know me would even like reading it. I would love to be a big time blogger, but I am not sure this blog is going that direction.
Blogger is finally adding a feature that I have been wanting for year now. I now can schedule future posts. This means I can write a post on Sunday to have it appear on Monday. This feature makes me so happy. Why would I want this feature. Right now I am working on a daily series about flickr views. Before I had to go back every day and post if I get the post done early. Now I can set it and forget it. I am very happy with this.
Note: This was my test post to make sure it works correctly.
I was looking at an old blog entry from back in 2002. Back then someone had the idea of doing a peer blog review. At that point the idea seemed fresh and new. Now I am not sure this idea would mean anything at all.
I will admit that when I started my blog and when blogs started to get well know, they seemed like something really important. Blogs seemed like a way to get the internet that seemed to go away as part of the Dot.Com boom. There seemed to be something special about the information you could get from blogs.
I am not sure why I keep this blog going. I like to write and it is good to have one place where I can collect my thoughts. Sad Salvation is a good place for me to collect those thoughts and share them with other people. I am no longer trying to drive traffic to my blog. If people find it okay, if they do not I am not going to worry. They can do what they want to read me, more power to them.
I am not sure what kind of response you would get to a Blog Peer Review project right now. Would you want MySpace blogs included? Would you want to include blogs where all people do are cut and paste memes? Would you exclude personal blogs? Would you only include blogs that have big reader bases? I am not sure how I would answer these questions.
Back in 1996 I remember a watching TV and seeing an "expert" talking about the future of the internet. The news reporter asked him about the future of web surfing. He said that he was not sure web surfing had a future. He said that the web was still new and we could not be sure what would happen. He was not sure that people would still be staying up all night surfing the web, going wherever links take up. It look he was right.
I am not trying to say that blogs are going away, but they are not as powerful as they were a few years ago. They seem to be left in the past some. I am not sure what I will think about blogs in the future, but they are not as important to me as they were in the past.
I am trying to figure out what realistic blogging goals for 2008 would be. I know that I will not be able to find the time to blog everyday. Between work and relationships, it is just not a good goal to set. I would fall behind and just about give up. That is not really what I want to do.
Should my goal to be to make three posts a week? Should I be looking for posts that will really be worth my time. I should be making posts that say something I want to say.
I will have to figure this one out. I would like to make a goal and meet it for at least 40 weeks next year.
I made a hand full of resolutions in 2007. I have been successful for most of them. One I just finished was blogging 150 photos. I think that blogging photos makes my blog more interesting and it makes me think about photography. Both of those things are good things.
If you want to see all the photos I have blogged this year they are in one place, you can look at my set on Flickr. They are in roughly the order I blogged them. I think it is cool to just look at that set.
Some days I feel this blog is nothing more than me looking at the back of my hand. I must admit that is what Twitter feels to me. Most of the Twitter messages I get are people saying, "Look How Cool I Am." I like some of them, but if you are twittering more than once hour every day you might want to rethink your twitter policy.
My blog has been feeling lonely lately. It is upset with me for treating it so poorly. It wants me to keep it up to date. It wants me to visit every day. It wants me to think about what I am posting. It wants more from me. The problem is that everything wants more of me. I only have so many hours in the day. I can only blog so much. I have to work, and live. Blogging seems far down the scale of things to do.
I am wondering if I should start over. Should I get rid of San Salvation and start a new blog. Maybe it is time to start something fresh. There are lots of things that have change about my life in the second half of 2007. Maybe a new blog should be one of them.
My blog needs a redesign. I have said this several times so far. The problem is I have no design skills and no one to redesign it for me. The problem is that the job pays no money. Someone would have to redesign it because the like me or out of the goodness of their heart. I am not sure anyone has that kind of goodness in their heart.
If you have been playing attention to my blog, you will notice I have been backdating for a while now. You will notice that most of my post are photo posts with very little content. I will admit to this. I have been backdating. I see nothing wrong with backdating. This is my place and I get to make up the rules. I know some people see this as dishonest, but I do not really care. I am only a K-list blogger and this is all about me.
To be honest, I have been very wrapped up in living my life. Finding things to actually write about would be very hard. I just do not have that much to say right now. Everything is about my job or my relationship. I really do not want to blog either of those things here.
For right now I will be backdating. The pain here is that my archive system is broken. Things do not show up there correctly. This change happened when Blogger added labels. I could ask Jeremy to try to fix it, but something tells me my $60 did not cover this.
Yes, I am back dating again. I know that some people do not like the idea of back dating in blogs. Why do I need to go into the past and back date entries. For some reason I really like to. That is why all these old entries are popping up.
I am not sure what backdating really means to me. I am really thinking about flickr and photos right now. It seems like the right way to get across what I am thinking about.
I am amused that a photo I took is in the top image results for the Google Canada search of pictures of sad people. It is the photo of Antwon at the top of the page. That might be why that photo has almost 700 views. I am happy that Sad Salvation and my Sad People photo set are both in the top five for this search. For a long time Sad Salvation would be found by people searching for pictures of sad people, but there were no sad people on my blog. I am happy that I have been able to fill this web nitch. Now people can find pictures of sad people because of me.
On the Sunday edition of the Mercury News there is a tease banner of 'Who Is Reading Your Blog?' The story is in the Perspective section. The column is about how people are obsessed with who is reading their blog, looking at their photos, watching their video, and visiting there myspace page. Views are one of the main currencies of the web. The numbers of views you get is the amount of attention we are getting.
I do not worry too much about who is reading Sad Salvation. I figured out a long time ago that I am a not going to be an A, B, or C-List blogger. I have always seen myself as a K-List blogger. My technorati rank is around 400,000 and I do not see it going up anytime soon. For whatever reason, I do not appeal to a mass audience. I know that people are reading it because I am getting comments from time to time.
I am obsessed about views when it comes to Flickr. Views are my main driver. I care that my median view does not drop. It has been slowly climbing this year. It seems to be stuck between 40 to 38. I have a group for photos that I think should have 100 views. For some reason I get the most reward out of people looking at my photos.
There is one quote in the story which I found interesting.
One concern, however, looms on the horizon for all those creators: In a world where everyone is busy churning out videos, blog entries, and podcasts (and counting the number of people who tune in), do we run the risk of having no one left to watch?
Yes, I spend much more time working on Sad Salvation than I do reading blogs. I spend much more time working on my photos than I send on looking at other people's photos. I am more focused on me than I am on other people. I guess that is part of why I like being a blogger.
I think it is time for me to turn my RSS feed back on. I turned it off because of a problem I was having with old entries. I am adding tags (Blogger calls them labels) to old entries and those old entries are showing up a new in my RSS feed. I turned off my RSS feed thinking I could pound out the old entries in a few weeks. With over 2400 entries, it was a larger job than I thought. I have not idea how many entries I have tagged, but it is less than half. The people who use my RSS feed will just have to put up with the Greatest Hits aspect of my blog for now. I will never everyone know when it is over, but it will be a while.
I have been looking the Sad Salvation referral logs. When I first started to blog I looked at them all the time. I even did posts about crazy ways people found my blog. There used to be a lot of crazy searches that pulled up Sad Salvation.
Now looking at my referral logs, 80% of the searches that find my blog are Image searches. Most of the images they find are old images, before I used flickr for my blog. It seems that some images are more popular than others. That is why I picked the flower tattoo for this post.
I know that many people do not link to my blog. Many of my readers have gone away since I turned off my RSS feed. It just wonder what it means that images are the most found thing about my blog. I have the feeling this is saying something about how people use the web is changing.
I was looking at an old Sad Salvation entry and I found a mix that I never finished. It was a Job/Layoff mix from back in 2001. It was at the bottom of the bubble and lots of people were getting laid off.
I figure that I better finish up the mix and put in my blog. It has become a little more of a work mix. tell me what you think.
I Better Take Anything They Got
Career Opportunities - The Clash Where Do I Go - Hair Soundtrack Fred Jones Pt 2 - Ben Folds Cowboy - Kid Rock Finest Worksong - R.E.M. Call In Sick - Big Daddy Graham Happy Workers - Tori Amos Working In A Coal Mine - Devo Working Undercover for the Man - They Might Be Giants Taking Care of Business - BTO Work Is A Four-Letter Word - The Smiths 9 To 5 - Dolly Parton Today Was A Good Day - Ice Cube I Will Survive - Gloria Gainer
I am turning off my RSS feed for a little while. I want to use the blogger label function to add tags to a lot of my old entries. The only way I can think to do this is to turn off my RSS feed. You will have visit Sad Salvation to get all of my blog goodness.
This is a quick note to the RSS feed readers of Sad Salvation. (Like those of you who read my Live Journal Feed) Blogger has added a new tagging feature. (They call it labels for some dumb reason) I have been using this feature and even tagging some of my old entries. The problem is that when I publish my old entries with tags, they have been showing up in my RSS feed. It used to not work this way. The RSS feed would only update if I updated an entry on my front page. I am not sure why blogger made these changes.
If you see old entries come up on my RSS feed, you know why it is. You might want to see it as a best of Sad Salvation as I add the tags.
I know that I should be putting more effort into my blog right now. I am getting a lot of extra readers from National Blog Posting Month. A lot of them are getting to by blog from the NaBloPoMo Randomizer. If my blog is not interesting the people finding my blog will not come back again in the future. I am just not sure I have anything interesting to say right now.
I just have no idea what to write. Since I do not know what to say, I will ask you to read my archives. I swear back there I have something worth reading back there. I am just not sure what you will find worth reading. Just give it a try. I have to go back to working on my novel.
As of today I have been writing and publishing Sad Salvation for five years. I am not sure if publishing is the right word for it, but I do not have a better word for it. It is hard for me to get my mind around the idea that I have been doing this for five years. It has become such a big part of my life while I have lived in San Jose. It is hard to remember living in San Jose and not writing Sad Salvation.
The funny thing is that much of my social scene is connected to Sad Salvation in one way or another. I have a whole collection of friends I have meet because of blogs and the internet. I think that is why Sad Salvation has lasted this long. I keep on doing it because it is easy for me to see the rewards.
A few things you may or may not know connected to Sad Salvation
- Invisible City had the first blog I ever read. - Sad Salvation started as a result of the 9/11 attacks - The End Of Summer Party was a blog my friends started to keep in touch with each other. It is long past gone. - The Zines I helped publish were, Senseless Banter, Read Our Minds, and Baggage. I was also published in a few other zines. - Super Karate Monkey Fist, Is my backup blog that I keep doing different things with. - Jeremy designed my current Sad Salvation look. - Vox, and LiveJournal are my other blog
If you want to know what is different now than five years ago you can read the archive. I know it has changed over that time. I should go back and read those entries to see who I have been over the last five years. It is not always easy to keep track of while you are living your life.
Here is a reprint of my first Sad Salvation entry. I hope you enjoy it.
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Welcome to Sad Salvation
I looked at my life a few years ago and thought about something. I was sitting at a coffee house thinking about starting a new zine. I was trying to rack my brain trying to figure out what I could personally publish that would be interesting for people to read. I was thinking of the zines that I had read recently. There was nothing that I was reading at the time that really excited me. Most of it was pretty meaning less.
I had read a decent number of zines. I have even published about a half dozen issues. I looked at what other people were writing. I found something incredibly personal in zines. They were a place where people could try to construct some kind of story about their lives. The zines I was reading at the time where unlike any of the other stories I was finding in the rest of the world.
Being 23 years old there was something really empowering about zines. I was right out of college and I seemed to be going nowhere in the world. All of my friends were facing the same situations. We were working at bookstores and restaurants. We were clerks and temps. We spent our time watching clocks and find ways to slack off. Zines seemed to be the best way to work out our artistic frustrations. Using the office copy machine to cut the cost of a zine was a natural thing to do.
I was sitting at this coffee shop and I was not 23 years any more. I was 27 years old and my friends were starting to find their way into careers. They were becoming teachers, designers, and engineers. It was my day off from a dot.com start up. The way my life was happening was slowly sinking in for me.
For most of my life, my friends have been the artist type. Growing up we would tell stories, dream up comic books, and talk about the kinds of movies we wanted to make. We were all writers at heart. As I went through my life, these were always the kinds of people that I became friends with. We were people who dreamt about making our impression on the world. We thought about big ideas and big ways to express them. The problem was that we were becoming regular people.
There is a whole generation of people that are just like me. People that in their heart see themselves as writers and artists, but their job does not reflect that. We are sitting around playing in bands for recreation. We write zines and web sites as an artist outlet. We keep on thinking that someday we will be able to break out and become a true artist.
In this light, writing a zine is Sad Salvation. It is not only our artistic salvation, but it is also salvation because it is what we value most in this world. I am not speaking about everyone. I am just talking about a type of person I seem to be close with. We are not starting families, we are not growing roots in a community, we are not working toward building specific lives for ourselves. I wonder if we will ever find that Salvation we are looking for.
I think I am finally done posting my comic con pictures. I posted 369 photos. I think I took a total of 1028 photos at Comic Con. I feel like I spent more time looking at the photos than on the floor at Comic Con.
I am still going through the photos from the rest of my vacation. It will be a long while before I am done with all of them, but they have a longer shelf life.
I just felt I should post one last Comic Con 2006 photo to Sad Salvation.
My vacation has been over since Wednesday. I have still been recovering with all that time. I think after this weekend I will be back to my normal self. I still have some Comic Con photos to sort through and post. I am really behind when it comes to posting photos to Flickr. I have a lot of non-Comic Con Vacation photos to sort through. For right now you can check out my Comic Con 2006, Women in Costume, and Summer Vacation 06 Sets.
I still have a lot to write about from vacation. I will apologize now to the people who expect my life to be up to date in my blog. I am going to write a lot of entries about what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. I know that my writing will not totally be in order. That is just one of the things you will have to put up with.
I think I am going to blog as many photos as I have good stories for. I took over 1000 photos at Comic Con and over 1000 photos on the rest of my vacation. I think I need to put some of those photos to a little more use than just posting them to flickr.
I just signed up for a Vox account. I am not sure what I am going to do with it. I already have a blog, a backup blog, LiveJournal, myspace, and Yahoo 360 account. You would think I already have enough places to blog. I guess I feel like I always need more. I know it is because I want to be there before it becomes big. If it turns out to be the next big thing, I want to be there before it is over. I had a Flickr account for almost a year before I started using it.
Vox has a lot of cool features. I can hook it right into my flickr account to make uploading photos easy. It also makes it easy for me to blog about music. I could make this my blog about music. That would be pretty cool.
I am not sure where all of these blogging services are going. I am not sure if I should cross post things or use every post for a different reason. I just wish I had enough time to keep all these blogs up to date.
I have an invite to share if anyone wants to try Vox. Just let me know.
I have been telling myself for years that I need personal business cards. People all the time want to know my blog. I have to hope they remember what I tell them. I know that many people never made it to my site.
Now I finally took the jump and ordered business cards. I will have something to hand out to people when they ask about the photos. They will be able to see the photos. The business card has Sad Salvation and my Flickr account on it. I just hope the business cards are really useful.
I am excited about having business cards to take with me to Comic Con. I am not sure why. It reminds of when I made business cards for myself in my high school printing class. They were not useful at all, but they were still fun to have. I guess it is a little thing that I have never out grown.
I look at my referral logs from time to time to see how people my find my blog. I was a little curious when I found someone found Sad Salvation with the search: my feeling about attending church without my mate. I could not think of an entry that would have tripped this search result. I looked around and I found that the search result came from this entry from an the interview meme.
One thing about writing a blog on a regular basics is that you generate a lot of text. I have been keeping this blog for several years now. I have no idea how many words I have written, but it has been a lot. I would like to think that I remember everything I have written here. After looking at my archives for a little while I realize that is impossible. I will not remember everything I ever wrote.
I find what I wrote about looking for a mate very interesting now. I think I know a little more about this and about myself now. I did not think about these things while I was in my last relationship, but I am thinking about them now.
I know that I should go back and read my old entries. I should see how much I have changed over the last couple of years. I might find something that I do not expect in those entries. After that I could go back and read my old journal that I kept before I started writing this blog. that might be interesting.
I realize that I have a handful of break up post in me. I know that bitching about relationships is one of the things people like to make fun of personal bloggers for. Oh well, one of the reasons I have a blog is because it is a space I control. I do it for myself first and for my readers second.
I will try to limit my posts to interesting insights or things that help me learn about myself. I think that is the essence of Sad Salvation. The things I write here may have been written a million times before. I think it is still good to write these things and share them.
I have just signed up for the abazab beta. I want to use it a little before I start posting things here. This might be a reason to redesign the Sad Salvation main page.
I would love to have someone redesign my webpage and my blog. I just do noe know anyone who is willing to do it for how little money I am willing to pay.
If Abazab is cool I might think about getting a web cam. I know that having web cam can only lead to bad things for me.
For Blog Sweeps Week I would like to have some guest bloggers on Sad Salvation. It would be cool if other people would write some entries for me. If anyone out there is interested please let me know. I have a couple of people lined up, but I need some more.
A friend of mine suggested that I kick off Blog Sweeps Week with a redesign of Sad Salvation. That is a good idea. The problem is that I really do not know enough about HTML or graphic design to do a good job. I got this design by paying a friend a few years ago. I do not have the cash to do that now. At that time I was lucking because I was on vacation when I paid him and I just took the money out of my vacation budget.
I do not have the skills or the money to get Sad Salvation redesigned. That means that I would have to depend on the kindness of others to get my web site redesigned. I really do not seeing this happening in the next couple of weeks. I guess I will have to just keep the design that I have right now.
My archive is currently broken. I do not recall making any changes that would brake it. I do not remember any changes at all. This pisses me off, but I am not sure how to fix it. Anyone have any ideas?
I love having comment boxes on weblog. The feedback is great. I think it improves my writing and Sad Salvation. I like knowing that people are out there reading my writing. It helps me know it is more then just yelling at the wind.
So far this entry with the picture below and this entry about the picture have received the most comments. Because the way the comment boxes work, it is hard to find the comments. I thought the comments below deserved.
Date/Time: July 10 2002, 05:46 pm
Poster: Bonni
I feel that I am violating her just by looking at her picture. Just her eyes are so expressive.
1. This muslim woman( who fully covers herself) puts her picture up for everyone's eyes to see. It is attracting men to her eyes. As a Muslim she cannot do this....
2. Because of her picture Rich she's got you thinking about her, making you think about whats underneath..etc. This is almost as worse as her taking her hijab and niqaab off. But I cannot judge this woman. Maybe she posted her pic wth different intentions.
When a woman covers herself she is respected, and the eyes of men are lowered out of respect.
Thank you for you comment on my web page. I think you added something to the ideas there. I would like to ask you a question.
You Wrote:
2. Because of her picture Rich she's got you thinking about her, making you think about whats underneath..etc. This is almost as worse as her taking her hijab and niqaab off. But I cannot judge this woman. Maybe she posted her pic with different intentions.
It did not get to think of her in a sexual way. I was think thinking about her body. I was thinking about how she views the world and what kind of person she is. Is that also wrong? I have heard that one of the reason Muslim women cover themselves is so they can be thought of as a person and not as a sexual object. Am I misunderstanding this?
I wanted to send this as an e-mail, but it got bounced back to me.
Like you I have a web site, but mine is on the reason why We [Muslim women] dress the way we do. I have pics of fully veiled women, ONLY for the sole purpose to show people the different styles of dress, and what is in acordance with the Islamic Law [Sahri'ah]. But just to have a pic of a veiled woman on a site for no reason doesn't sit right with me. But this is my own opinion.
I want to start by thanking you for stopping and thinking about the fact that you were USING her. I know most people don't think of the image of a person as USING them, but in a way, that is what is going on.
I have two point of view, which counter each other, in some ways.
1- any image, male or female, covered or uncovered is NOT public property. It is that persons. We steal something from them when we use them without permission, for it is their "copyright" of their face/body.
2- Images of individual styles of dress help explain and educate others. As the saying goes, Picture is worth a thousand words.
So how do we use, but not abuse? That is the real question. So, I give you permission to use my images of my veiled face (with eyes exposed) or covered from my webpage, ok Rich?
It did not get to think of her in a sexual way. I was think thinking about her body. I was thinking about how she views the world and what kind of person she is. Is that also wrong? I have heard that one of the reason Muslim women cover themselves is so they can be thought of as a person and not as a sexual object. Am I misunderstanding this?
Amongst the soul reasons a woman wears the covering, is to be respected and honoured of her right as a person who has the potential of any other woman. But that beautiful gem is hidden to the eyes of the world and with that comes great respect. I have to agree with your comment there abt that yes. But I also strongly agree with my fellow Muslim sisters above. By protraying that Muslim woman's picture, you ARE using her as an ad (maybe not intentially) to your website...(for that is how I got here in the first place). I'm curoius to see your viewpoint on that.
When I feel that one of my sisters in Islam, no matter what nationality she is, or even if she has done any wrong to me, is being treated with direspect, I am obligated to stand up for her when she cannot. The rest of what I have to say has been said by my sisters above.
These are ways people used to find my web site. I used to be the wrong number of the internet. My reduced number of updates have put a change to that. Now Google searchs do not pull me up as often. It has to do with how often you update your web site. If I start updating my Sad Salvation a lot again, maybe I can once again be the web site people find when they search for Fight Club Tux.
Quick! Before you get a chance to think about it. Why do you keep a weblog? Give me the off the top or your head answer.
Now take a moment and think. Think about what you keep on logging on everyday. Think about why you keep on updating things. Think about why you even have a web page to begin with.
I was reading a web article that made me think about all these things. My off the top of my head answer is because I have to write something. I might as well put it on the web. If I do not write things I start to feel hollow inside. I would like someone to read it.
After I think about it, I have a weblog because there has to be something good one the web. I do not want the web to be just a mall I can shop from at work. I do not want every web page to be owned by a company. I think it is important that people are out there. Right now the most interesting thing I can do is weblog. I think that is true for most people.
Blogger has improved its archiving system. I am no longer limited by the week I used blogger. It will not publish archives going as far back as I want. I am importing all of my old Blog 5.0 entries to Blogger now. All of Sad Salvation can be in one place. If you give me a while everything will be in one place. I can work to shut down my old web site. It is nice to have everything in the same place. I wonder if I should put any of my pre-blog journal on-line.
I have decided to get rid of my the Travel-Blogue. I needed to clip a little disk space and I have not been using it. It seemed like it was just going to waste. All of the entries have been folded back into Sad Salvation. I would think about doing it again if I was planing on traveling with another person. Are of my travels in the near future will be solo. It was a good idea, I just was not keeping it up.
Sad Salvation: Rich Thomas, a self-described "nearing 30 gadget head and phone monkey," says about his weblog: "Day by day by day by day....this is my attempt to make sense of the world".
I'd say that his title, Sad Salvation, pretty much sums up the feel of the 'blog. It's somber and kind of tedious.
This is just my opinion; and personally, I tend to like weblogs that are more about commentary on other web sites and the news than about day-to-day activities. Rich's weblog is definitely more of a journal: He talks about his job at TiVO, his travels, how much he drank that day.
You might find the fact that he works at TiVo interesting. I did; but he can't write about it too much, for fear that one of his bosses or coworkers would read it. A quote from Rich from October 5, 2001: "I know that I cannot write everything that I want to write about work on this Web Log. I want people who I work with to be able to read it. I want to mention the name of the company that I work for, TiVo. I also want to mention my name. The problem is if I have these two things in this web log, who knows who will be able to find it. Some one might be able to search for it. I could cause some bad times for myself."
As for his weblog layout/design, I'm pretty sure it's a Blogger template. It's blue, uncompelling. It's easy to navigate though, and that's more important than the look of the design.
Main content: Journal, travelouge, personal musings on life, etc.
Personally, his content didn't resonate with me, cause me to think or want to come back to read more. I probably won't visit again, but that's just me. I urge you all to go check it out. Who knows, you might like it!
I think this person hits my weblog right on. There are a lot of things here I can improve on. I have to think about making Sad Salvation better or not spend less time on it. I want this to be about my life, but I think I can make it a better read.
I just want to warn people that many of my travel notes will be back dated. I do this because I actually write the notes on the day listed. It just takes me time to post them. I feel no problem backdating those notes. If you have a problem with it, start your own blog.
I am missing so much drive. I am missing the ability to just sit down and write. I am in front of a computer all day long. How can I sit down at home and write for four hours. I just do not take enough time to cover all the projects I want to cover. Sad Salvation is hurting from all this other writing. I need to sit down this weekend and write. I need to put some time into it.
I have started a new web log just for travel writing. I have started it because there will be another person on at least one of my trips this year. I want her to be able to post to it. I really do not want anyone else ever posting to Sad Salvation. The new web log is Travel-Blogue.
Part of me wants to have the people I am visiting post to this web log also. I am not sure if they are would get it. I have been trying to do projects where other people post. Most of the time, I have a hard time getting people to post to these web logs. I know that people just do not have the time to sit around and write. I am not sure I could convince them to spend the time it would take.
I am going to cross-publish some entries on both Sad Salvation and Travel-Blogue. I really am not worried that I am going to put the same thing in both place. I really want Travel-Blogue to be more of a solo archive with some of its own content. I am not really sure how going to use it right now. I know that it is something that I wanted to set up.
I have started this new web log just to log the movements of life and travel. I traveled very little last year. I plan to travel much more often in 2002. I want a single place to write about all my travel ideas. I am going to post some of these ideas on both Travel-Blogue and Sad Salvation. I think there are some Ideas that I am only going to post here.
I think that travel is important. It gives us the chance to see things outside of our lives. It is important to try to get away from your day to day life when you travel. I do not think people should take there work with them. Too often people cannot get away from the world that they are in. I think it gives people a small vision of the world. We have to step back from our lives and our visions of the world to really recharge.
Other people are also going to be posting on this web log. I want the people I travel with and some of the people I visit to be able to post here. I would love to see what they think about this trip. There are still a ton of things to do before I actually hit the road.
I want to start a Travelogue on Sad Salvation. It is the start of the year and I want to travel a couple of times this year. I have not settled on all of my plans yet. There are more then a few things bumping around my head. Steve is getting married this fall. That is time I am going to spend in San Diego. My cousin is getting married in June in Knoxville. Jen is getting married this summer. That would be a trip to Pittsburgh in July. I was talking with Cathy about taking a trip with her. There is part of me that wants to drive cross country this summer.
I am not sure where I want to go. Most likely I will have to do a good deal of this travel alone. Being the Uber-single man I do not expect to have a traveling companion by the time I hit the road. I am not sure how much I want to travel alone. I have a lot of vacation time saved up and I have to use it some time. When I lived with my parents I loved to travel alone. It was my chance to be on my own. Now I am on my own all the time. I do not need to be on my own more often. Most of my life is about the time I spend by myself.
The problem with traveling on my own is very often I do not do as many activities as I would do if I was with another person. I do not take the time to look at the world around me. I just rush through everything. It also seems less important because I am not sharing it with any one. It feels less important because I am doing it all on my own. It is hard to explain, but things do feel more valid when they are shared with another person.
No matter what I will travel somewhere this year. I will start up the car and head away from San Jose. I just do not know the extent yet. I am not sure if it will only be for a few small trips or if it will be a big cross-country ride. That is what I need to decide for myself. There will be a need for a travelogue this year. That travelogue will be part of Sad Salvation.
I signed up from Blogger Pro yesterday. Today my account kicked over. The options are okay. I am happy to have the spell checker back. The drafts feature is great for Super Karate Monkey Fist, since in theory, other people post to it.
Currently it is $35 a year to sign up for Blogger Pro. I think this is really worth it for me. I am not sure that I am going to use the pro features all that much. It is worth it because I really like the service at it is. I know I can use it for free, but it is worth $35 a year to me. I want to see blogger succeed. I think that using their Pro features will help. I will have to see how it goes.
Right now my brain feels really dry. Dry in that drought, nothing to give, nothing to sustain anything, kind of way. I have not been writing a lot on Sad Salvation lately. It has been going to the wayside. There seems like there are hundred other things for me to do. There are too many ways for me to spend my time. There are too many things that cry for my attention. I seem to give my attention to the things are the lease productive.
I have decided to use my Live Journal site as a Dream Diary. I think it is a good way to use that site. Jeremy said that he is thinking about having a group of people use Live Journal sites to start a dream collective. I really like this idea. It gives me something meaningful to put on my Live Journal. I have been having a hard time putting anything meaningful there without keeping things off Sad Salvation.
I am trying to decide what kind of things I should write about on Sad Salvation. I feel that I am bogging down on too many ideas that are personal. I am writing about things that would not interest people who do not know me. I want to write things that are more universal. I want just about anyone to come to my web site and be able to read it.
The problem is some of the best web logs I read are sprinkled with personal posts. I am just not sure where that line is. I am not sure how much I can write about myself without making this boring. I wonder how other people do this. Do other writers think about this at all.
I am trying to use Sad Salvation to improve my writing. I am not sure if I am doing that or not. I am not sure if I am taking the time to make my writing better or if I am just writing what ever comes to my mind. I have been disappointed by some of the things I have written. I just do not have the time or energy to re-write them. This is something that I will have to deal with in the new year.
