Something has changed within me. I'm not sure what it was that I had hoped to accomplish by taking time off from work, but yesterday I hit a sudden change in stride. I'm not sure if I've bored of it, or if I somehow achieved an unknown imaginary state without any inner knowledge of having done so, but I'm done. Today I will start looking for something else to do. I have tired of being too sedentary, though in truth I have hardly been so. I will become a money-maker again, a tax-payer, a provider, an earner.
I hope that I don't also "grow up" and become a Republican, as my old friend B.W. has suggested. Now that I have a child it is a genuine fear and possibility. All that I lack is residence in Florida, an ugly demeanor and outlook.
I got an interesting email yesterday morning. I had decided to develop a site that Rachel and I owned www.laziestnerdever.com because the term was the #1 Google search result and had been for a couple of years based on a post I wrote here more than two years ago. So, I put a little bit of effort into developing it and started posting faux news headlines, ones that were often linked to actual news headlines and events.
Things got off to a good start, a friend posted a link to one of my articles on a chat about dolphins that had gone viral and within just a few days of starting it I was getting a thousand hits or more each day. Good traffic for a brand new site. But then the new visitors tapered off and it settled down to anywhere between 200 and 400 pageviews a day. Then yesterday I got the email...
An old friend from NYC wrote me an email that he hasn't been able to read any of my posts any more, that he can see lots of new posts but they are just previews of news events, there is no writing there any more to read. I sent him the link to this blog and explained that I've developed the new site and that it is something different. He explained that he finds my site each time he goes to read it by searching the term "Laziest Nerd Ever" and then follows that link to the newest posts.
So, the thing that was preventing him from getting where he wanted to be (all of the new articles that show up now under that search term, rather than the one old post from this site) was the very thing that indicated to me that I should develop the new site.
Perfect. Very typical of my life. I've spent a week thinking of ways to maximize all of this interest that has developed around my new site in the last two years and it turns out to have been one friend that was using the term to navigate here. He and I should probably go into business together. It was meant to be.
Oh well, it's still the #1 result and the new site has been a fun learning experience. The money has not exactly avalanched in on us yet, but I still have much to learn about how to maximize earnings from traffic. When all is said and done I will be that much wiser and with that much more experience under my belt.
A lifetime full of experience that results in about $1.36 each day.
On Friday I go to meet a woman at SSU (Sonoma State University) about getting my California state teacher's certification. There is a test that I can take. If I pass then they will let me teach and perhaps I will embark on a new phase in my life, possibly heading towards getting my Master's degree, as they will foot the bill if I act accordingly for long enough. I have been told by many friends that teaching should be my "calling." If I fail the test then there are courses designed to help me pass it the next time that I take it.
But I don't fail tests, I never have. I excel when under intellectual pressure. I have the mind of a starved three-legged jackal. I believe that I was once a Caribbean dictator in a previous life. I have visions of having people beaten with a horse whip under soft, clear moonlight... the breeze from the Gulf Of Mexico dancing through the palm trees.
I get aroused at the phrase "standardized testing procedures..." I am what is known as a "squirter", etc.
No, I kid. I have aged and I worry about my diminished capacity to learn. My memory fails me now and I find myself asserting confusing visions of an imaginary world, demanding their relevance. Just a few days ago I was insisting to Rachel that a lamb is a different animal from a sheep. My sense of taxonomy being skewed unfavorably by my voracious culinary tastes.
Oh mutton, damn it all.
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