Giving the Blogging Thing Another Try

I remember fondly the days of old. The days when I looked forward to coming up with nonsensical gibberish, laughing hysterically, and typing those thoughts in hopes that at least one other person might crack a smile (or at least continue reading until the end of the post without closing the window). I would hear rumors every once in a while that people I've never met actually read my posts in their entirety.

This is a good post

The problem was that I put too much pressure on myself. I would go for a ride, see a rock on the side of the road, and think "Hmm, I wonder if I can make a post out of that'. Aside: I completely ignored the fact that people have been making posts out of stone for years. End Aside. I would go for a run and think deep thoughts, like "If a blogger writes a post and nobody reads it, does it still count as a post?" and then try and craft a way to run the experiment. The trouble with the test are the impossible parameters of writing a post that's not really a post and getting no one to read it to try and prove your hypothesis. But, that's akin to data tampering and I didn't want to taint my reputation by becoming a blogger who purposely tried to write a post that nobody would read in an interesting fashion only to force them not to read it. The concept kinda imploded upon itself.

Thinking about blogging became a near obsession. Almost an addiction. I had delusions of legions of fans waiting by their computers with digital alarms by the ready, waiting the read the very thoughts that would spew from my keyboard in an attempt to help them waste more of their precious little available time. That's when I came to the conclusion that I might have been doing more harm than good. Think of how much better the collective world would be if people used an extra 10 minutes in the world being more efficient at life than sitting at their computer reading semi-entertaining internet goo. Let's see, that's 7.4 billion Earth inhabitants. all of which are potential readers and, therefore, must be included in the math. Aside 2: I'm conveniently ignoring the extra-terrestrial readers. I feel this is appropriate since we don't have even close to an accurate count as to how many of them are available or if they do the reading thing in the traditional method or if they can download the data directly into their thinking apparati. I wouldn't want to skew the data. Again, I'm concerned about my scientific blogger reputation. End Aside 2. Since 1 billion seconds is roughly 31 years, 251 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes (there's some margin of error here since there are leap years and I'm not sure if I started this set of calculations on a leap year or not, which also means I don't know how many leap years occurred in the middle of the calculation, so please just accept that number as a mostly inaccurate yet acceptable product for the unit of time), there's a lot of time available in the productivity bank.

When all is done, all the ones have been carried and all the readers taken into account, by not blogging I saved collective human race 234.6 years of wasted productivity. By not writing, the ability for mankind to accomplish more and really let technology soar should have been vastly increased. I'm expecting my invitation from the King of Sweden to come and collect my shiny new penny in the name of Economics to come in the mail any day now. ('Cause I'm pretty sure that's how they notify Nobel Prize winners these days.)

Alas, when you review what's been happening in the world, you'd find that productivity hasn't really increased in the way one would expect 200+ years in the future should have, or what Don Hertzfeld would have you believe. Trump versus Hillary running for President with people actually showing up to their rallies (if that's not a time waster, I don't know what is). The Olympics getting ready to open in a third world Rio (certainly 234 years could have been used to build a nice, clean Olympic venue by now). Britain quitting Europe (I'm pretty sure they're plotting to re-conquer the world, or at least start a new music invasion). McDonald's employees successfully rallying to get a $15 minimum wage with regard to the trickle-down effect on the local businesses or using that time to learn a marketable skill. Chris Hadfield is no longer in space (not sure how to tie this in with productivity other than it really is a shame).

The only things I've learned from not blogging is that people aren't likely to start using their free time more productively regardless of what I do. It's as if I have no actual control over the happenings of the world. Who knew? That and it's highly likely that Nobel Foundation doesn't use the US Post Office to contact potential recipients and they probably don't have my email address. Oh well, I guess I'll try writing again and be ready to accept the blame for the woes of the world.