And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Column

About sixteen years ago I started something I called my column. I’d write about some topic and e-mail it to a list of people, and sometimes they’d write back and tell me what they thought about that day’s edition. I styled it after newspaper opinion columnists. (Think Bob Greene, Mike Royko and the like.) 

This was before blogs. Or at least before blogs were popular. And that meant I had a hard time reaching many folks. I think my peak readership was about 50 people—nothing to sneeze at, considering I had to literally search for people to read my writing—but far below the number of people I hoped to reach.

 That old method humbled me many times. This was the back in the days of America Online (Remember dial-up? Yikes!). They had a feature that allowed users to view the status of e-mails sent to other AOL users. So I’d send the column, usually late at night, and often after most of America was already asleep, and then right away I’d check the status of that e-mail. Invariably there’d be someone who had decided they no longer wanted to read what I wrote so they’d delete the message as soon as they received it. Then I’d curse them (figuratively, not literally) that they deleted it without even reading it, and I’d want to delete them from the list, but I wouldn’t.

Oh no, one deletion wouldn’t get you removed from the list. You’d have to delete it like forty-three days in a row to be removed. Then I’d get the hint. But if you deleted it for, say, twenty-six days, and then read it on the twenty-seventh day, then I’d be convinced you were back in the fold and I wouldn’t think of deleting you in the future.  

I did have a solid core of readers though. Most of them were friends that I knew in real life, but there were a few who I had never met and knew only through AOL. They’d read what I wrote, maybe respond with an idea or two. It’s nice when someone reads something you write, and nicer still when they take the time to let you know what they thought of it.

Although sometimes just not deleting the message before reading it was good enough for my self-esteem!

The column lasted for about two years and then I stopped writing it. My plan at the time was to work on other types of writing and put it out there for people to read.

Actually, calling it a plan is a bit of a misnomer, since I really had no idea how I get it in front of people’s eyes. I’d never heard of a blog at that time, and breaking into print publishing is notoriously difficult, so how exactly did I plan to have people read what I was writing? Your guess is as good as mine.

But now I’ve decided to begin the column again. I suppose it will be called a blog now. Everyone has a blog, so I might as well join them, right? I hope to post three or four entries per week. Some will be serious, some will be ridiculous. I hope they’re all worth reading. If you like/hate what I wrote, (dis)agree with me, or think I’m the smartest/dumbest person you’ve ever met, then let me know.

It could be that no one reads this, and, if so, that’s fine. I’d be no worse off than I am now. Except for some finger cramps maybe.

Believe me, I know it’s rather presumptuous to assume that anyone cares what I have to say. Blogs and the people who write them are a dime a dozen, so why in the hell should you devote any of your most precious commodity—time—to read what I write?

Hey, don’t look at me for the answer, because I don’t have it. All I can do is write. And if you like it, come on back. If you don’t, come on back anyway. Maybe you’ll like it next time.

Thanks in advance for being a regular visitor.

 (Or curse you for ignoring me!)