I'LL DRINK THE KOOL AID NOW

I have heard the " Drink the Kool Aid" metaphor used in a negative way for a long time. If that's applied to you it means you follow a belief blindly and devoid of any independent thought. The negativity is associated chiefly with the Jim Jones, Jamestown tragedy that took place in 1978. I think that the Kool Aid is actually a good thing.

At this point I am certain that you are thinking I'm either a zombie or a monster for saying this, but please read on. I think that we need to drink our own Kool Aid, which happens to carry a lot of that self confidence we need in order to move forward in life. So why not drink the Kool Aid?  The truth is that if we aren't capable of following our own desires in this life, no one will follow us when it's necessary.

Every single day we need to capture someone's attention. If we are being interviewed for a job we need to be able to sell our abilities and get a person to see what we see. So drinking the Kool Aid is not a bad thing, nor is getting others to drink the Kool Aid as well. So next time you are going through the internet, by all means stop on by and drink my wonderful Kool Aid so you may be one with my awesome nature.

YOU LEARN

Sometimes you have to step back and look at someone else's work, in order to learn something. I stepped back recently and read the work of a fellow blogger in depth. I'll cal him the rat because that's what he calls himself. Some of his entries are longer than other and they cover a wide variety of things, from news, to blues, to life. I enjoyed the reads simply because they taught me that in blogging life, you don't have to write a million things to be clear. I like the fact that I don't necessarily agree with everything Rat writes, because it makes me think about different perspectives. I have seen people get out of the mohave simply because they don't agree, I guess ignorance works that way. I want to say to the rat, thanks, I learned a neat trick.

IF YOU CAN SELF PROMOTE YOU ARE OKAY

I love the term shameless self promoter because it's kind of a contradiction. When a person says you are shameless they almost mean it in a derogatory manner. I am shameless but it's because I have nothing to be ashamed of. The fact is that when you are starting out no one will promote you so you have to do it yourself. If you are a writer this means multiple things outside of putting pen to paper on a daily basis.

Oh my blog! let's all get on the blog train to blog city. When you are a writer looking to get attention it's a great idea to go ahead and start a blog with opinions on relevant topics. The more outrageous your view the more attention you can draw to yourself. It's not about shocking people so much as it is about getting a little attention from different places. Of course there is a secondary option outside of blog city and that is self publishing.

The chances of you writing a best seller without any proper backing are very rare but if you have that little book to demonstrate what you can do as well as that sense of esthetics that's ever so important you definitely have an opportunity to draw some much needed attention to yourself. The point is to make yourself as visible as possible in order to show potential backers who you are and what you can do.

Always remember that no one ever paid attention to a person with little to say.

WHY BLOGGING IS NOT FRUITLESS

I used to think of blogging as another way for over opinionated people to spew their pseudo intellectual pearls on to the rest of the world. I will go as far saying that the word blog itself made me want to throw up in the sense that it was a word used largely by people that I perceived to be complete assholes. One day a childhood friend said "You should start a blog" and I decided to give it a shot just to see if I could be a lesser evil. The first year I had this blog I only put out some six blog entries total and did not bother to look at stats or anything of the sort.

As time went on I kept hearing that question about why I wasn't doing anything with my blogs. I never bothered to answer because frankly I felt that I did not need to do so. One day everything changed as my paid writing assignments started to wane a bit. I began to wonder about my writing and how I could stay relevant to myself. I was reminded of a tidbit  read my first day of class in Full Sail's MFA in Creative Writing program, that tidbit was that writers write. I hear that over and over and I realized that I would be doing myself a grave injustice if I stopped writing on the basis of what I was or was not earning.

Over the last six months I have been averaging something close to thirty entries a month and over that period of time I have been reminding myself of several things. First thing is that writers starting out have to be consistent in order to get somewhere. The second thing I remembered was that writers must self promote in all possible avenues. Every writer has a strong point and that can be anything from telling a story, to relating facts, to giving an opinion. I was reminded that building up volume of work helps get your name out there. In a six month period I have managed to build my stats to nearly 14,000 views in over 180 entries. I have finally taken in enough income to buy myself three candy bars from my google adsense and I am seeing exposure of my work in other countries even if it's only ten people that hit the page.  

If I continue to go at the pace I am going I know eventually I will hit some sort of niche. Blogging also makes social media useful as it's good to showcase your work in facebook, and twitter as well as google plus in order get that work in front of as many people as you can and make sure they are as varied a crowd as can be. The bottom line is that if your serious about getting exposure and building something relevant to put in your resume a blog is a great way to go.