Got up this morning at 4:30 my time and as is my wont immediately fetched my phone and checked the news: Thirty-six people killed in a stampede in Shanghai. That's a lot of people to be killed in a stampede, China is important to me, so I was going to post something to note it as a public occurrence.
But I didn't (Or I didn't until now anyway.). I was lazy, I just wanted to lay in bed and read and vege for a little while so that's what I did but as I was laying there vege'ing I began thinking should I write something about this if all I was going to do is "note it." And I started thinking more.
I have written posts like this in the past, but more remotely, it seems to me it's been a few years, "posts like this" meaning, "What is this blog called Public Occurrences supposed to be?" The name of the blog justifies, seems to require, that thirty-six people dead in a Shanghai stampede should be documented in some way. But it's a blog not a news service; I'm one guy, there are a zillion news services. How many people get their news from Public Occurrences?
What am I doing by copying and pasting a headline? Nothing. Nothing that a person can't get like I got it, by opening my phone or 'puter and checking the news services.
As I said, I have had this debate with myself in the past. In the beginning I just ignored the title and wrote about what I wanted to write about, which initially was just Islam, some art, then was just China--big stuff certainly, sho' nuff public occurrences--but then, and I don't remember what caused this paradigm shift but then I "broadened," I "branched out," I started writing about everything under the sun. I remember, I think it was in 2010, I was exhausted from writing about China, and whatever I had written turned out to be the 1,100th post. From late 2002 to whenever in 2010 I had written 1,100 posts. Recently, we hit 5,000. So in four years I had written 3,900 posts and in the previous eight years there had been 1,100. That is a paradigm shift!
Reading the news makes me think; writing forces me to think and I think I became a more..."thoughtful" person for having "branched out" into writing about, say, economics, which I assiduously avoided for years because I didn't know shit! or, say, Russia, because I had to read up on those subjects, to semi-educate myself. So I don't want to lose that salutary effect of branching out but I want to be more thoughtful in the sense of giving more thought to things I write about before I write them, being less a cipher, less, in that way, thoughtless. Cutting and pasting a headline requires no thought. The late Hugh Sidey used to have a column in Time, it was once a week but every week. Every frigging thing that guy wrote was thoughtful, he had a week to think about it!
Google told us bloggers a few years ago, this was one reason for the above-described paradigm shift now that I think about it, that if you want more readers you have to continuously update, that if readers "stumble upon" a blog and see that it was last updated a week earlier they're more likely to skip it for one more "timely." And Google promotes their blogs, I don't know exactly how they do it but in some way, like the various national Public Occurrences that they've created--without me even knowing--one for Russia, one for Singapore, one for the UK, South Korea, I don't know how many, but Google promotes them based on subject matter I presume (Singapore?) and timeliness. Publish or perish. So, and this is on the order of "on the other hand," I do not want to lose readers. Why not? Ego.
So my New Year's resolution is to write less frequently (he says as he feels a chill go through his body.). What stuff might I not write about? Certainly the copy-and-paste headline stuff. Google stats. Sports. Less, if any, on Man City and Incarnate Word. Electioneering. Hardly wrote about the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections; wrote a lot about 2012. Beyond that I don't know; have to play it by ear. New Year's resolutions are made to be broken.
But I didn't (Or I didn't until now anyway.). I was lazy, I just wanted to lay in bed and read and vege for a little while so that's what I did but as I was laying there vege'ing I began thinking should I write something about this if all I was going to do is "note it." And I started thinking more.
I have written posts like this in the past, but more remotely, it seems to me it's been a few years, "posts like this" meaning, "What is this blog called Public Occurrences supposed to be?" The name of the blog justifies, seems to require, that thirty-six people dead in a Shanghai stampede should be documented in some way. But it's a blog not a news service; I'm one guy, there are a zillion news services. How many people get their news from Public Occurrences?
What am I doing by copying and pasting a headline? Nothing. Nothing that a person can't get like I got it, by opening my phone or 'puter and checking the news services.
As I said, I have had this debate with myself in the past. In the beginning I just ignored the title and wrote about what I wanted to write about, which initially was just Islam, some art, then was just China--big stuff certainly, sho' nuff public occurrences--but then, and I don't remember what caused this paradigm shift but then I "broadened," I "branched out," I started writing about everything under the sun. I remember, I think it was in 2010, I was exhausted from writing about China, and whatever I had written turned out to be the 1,100th post. From late 2002 to whenever in 2010 I had written 1,100 posts. Recently, we hit 5,000. So in four years I had written 3,900 posts and in the previous eight years there had been 1,100. That is a paradigm shift!
Reading the news makes me think; writing forces me to think and I think I became a more..."thoughtful" person for having "branched out" into writing about, say, economics, which I assiduously avoided for years because I didn't know shit! or, say, Russia, because I had to read up on those subjects, to semi-educate myself. So I don't want to lose that salutary effect of branching out but I want to be more thoughtful in the sense of giving more thought to things I write about before I write them, being less a cipher, less, in that way, thoughtless. Cutting and pasting a headline requires no thought. The late Hugh Sidey used to have a column in Time, it was once a week but every week. Every frigging thing that guy wrote was thoughtful, he had a week to think about it!
Google told us bloggers a few years ago, this was one reason for the above-described paradigm shift now that I think about it, that if you want more readers you have to continuously update, that if readers "stumble upon" a blog and see that it was last updated a week earlier they're more likely to skip it for one more "timely." And Google promotes their blogs, I don't know exactly how they do it but in some way, like the various national Public Occurrences that they've created--without me even knowing--one for Russia, one for Singapore, one for the UK, South Korea, I don't know how many, but Google promotes them based on subject matter I presume (Singapore?) and timeliness. Publish or perish. So, and this is on the order of "on the other hand," I do not want to lose readers. Why not? Ego.
So my New Year's resolution is to write less frequently (he says as he feels a chill go through his body.). What stuff might I not write about? Certainly the copy-and-paste headline stuff. Google stats. Sports. Less, if any, on Man City and Incarnate Word. Electioneering. Hardly wrote about the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections; wrote a lot about 2012. Beyond that I don't know; have to play it by ear. New Year's resolutions are made to be broken.
