Category Archives: Blog Viewers

Guest Blog: How Judy Gets Blog Views?

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Hola to Judy’s readers. Some of you know me here as okcforgottenman, Judy’s (mostly) behind-the-scenes/curtain techie, keeper of secrets, and spotter of misspellings. I also like watching her blog stats daily as I try to figure out what specifically draws viewers/readers in. A few minutes ago I saw that someone out there in cyberspace today found Judy’s blog by typing in an interesting keyword search into some search engine:

rumcolafemaleorgasm

In case your screen is too small (or, like me, your eyes are too mature), here’s a closer view:

rumcolafemaleorgasm2

Might this yield further insight as to how Judy acquires more readers?

Judy? –

(Judy speaking now.) Well, over-60 female viewers might agree that we need to find our thrills where we can find them and a little fermented sugar cane mixed with a cola beverage seems a pretty socially acceptable way to find our bliss.  Do you agree, ladies?

As for forgottenman, you have no idea how many things in stats I would miss if it were not for him. He pointed out a milestone in views reached yesterday, has found reviews of my poems in a New Delhi newspaper and he was the one who spotted the article in a British online news magazine that did a comparison between my stats and Donald Trump’s.  Now how unlikely is that and how would I have ever known? Nice to have someone backing me up on my blog. He writes a pretty mean blog, as well–quality-wise if not quantity-wise.  You should check it out HERE.

He is also the one responsible for fishing your comments out of Spam, where they have unfairly been filed by WordPress.  So let’s give him a big round of applause. okcfm, I’d like to see you do another guest blog on the weirdest search engine terms you’ve seen on both of our blogs.. and challenge others to check theirs out for oddities to share as well.

Ball’s in your court, forgottenman.  –Judy

Blog-out

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Blog-out

Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!

He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.

Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.

Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.

Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.

A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.

History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.

 

The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/

Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it.  See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right?  WordPress doesn’t let you do that.  Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them.  So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution.  As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised.  What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius!  His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!!  Tell me that isn’t genius.

Familiar Names and Faces

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                                                             Familiar Names and Faces

The extent of my doing something “scary or stressful” nowadays pretty much extends to public speaking, and it is pretty obvious that being surrounded by friends is a definite plus in this situation.  To have an audience devoid of friends probably indicates that one’s friends are not too interested in hearing what one says, and I’m afraid this wouldn’t be too encouraging, would it?  It would be like writing a blog and not recognizing one familiar name on one’s “Like” list or comments. Only the uninitiated dare stray there.

When I return to a blog I’ve written, it is reassuring not only that there are “Likes” and comments, but that in addition to a few new readers that the old familiars are listed there. Some of you have been reading my blog since I first started writing it, and I hope you realize how welcome your regular appearance is.  As blogging takes over my life, you give reassurance that this is not an activity practiced in vain.  Someone really is out there listening–their invisibility shattered by simply hitting the “Like” button or penning a comment.

Perhaps it is vanity that causes us to return here again and again to spill our thoughts across the screen, but I don’t think it is only that. I see us all as members of a vast worldwide audience who are simply taking our turn to try to bring what we can to this great internet stew.  Like the old “Stone Soup” story, each of us brings what we can to add to the brew and in doing so we create an incredible and rich dish to share with all!

Thanks for being my familiars.  I have been enriched by being yours as well.

 

The Prompt: Witness Protection–When you do something scary or stressful — bungee jumping, public speaking, etc. — do you prefer to be surrounded by friends or by strangers? Why?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/witness-protection/

Blogomania

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Sun Goin’ Down on the Social Network!

Blogomania

Blog obsession? I tried to quit.
How did I get over it?
I psychoanalyzed myself,
then put my blog up on a shelf
and ventured out to have a life––
to be a girlfriend or a wife.
I went on social media,
put up with all its tedia
to try to find that special one
to have some extra-blogging fun.
I used my laptop not for blogging
but for romantic lollygogging.

And when I found a special one
who seemed intelligent and fun,
we wrote a bit and then, and then
I thought that I could blog again.
I confessed to him (with perfect diction)
my very slight blogging addiction.
He asked to read my blog and so
I told him just where he could go
to read me. Then I didn’t hear
from him again.  I thought it queer.

Finally, I asked him why
he’d let our conversation die.
He wrote back and that is when
he said I hadn’t time for men.
That if he wants more information,
he’ll simply get his daily ration
on my blog, then said good-bye.
And that is how I lost that guy.
Of future loves?  I had one fewer.
But at least I gained a viewer!!!

The Prompt: Happy Endings.  Tell us about something you tried to quit.  How did that turn out?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/happy-endings/

Morning Dew and Switcheroo: WordPress Daily Prompt Weds NaPoWriMo

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When I’ve Passed A Restless Night

When I’ve passed a restless night,
to once more welcome morning light,
I do not leave a lover’s grasp.
No knitted legs need to unclasp.
What time on waking I can afford
is spent by me, unwinding cord:
the earbud cord around my neck,
my PC power cord from the wreck
of pillows, comforter and sheet
that somehow, now, are at my feet.
My MacBook Air, just by my shoulder
has come unplugged and so is colder
to my touch. It won’t power on.
Then, when plugged in, my poem is gone.

For the month of April, I am marching to the beat of two drummers, NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and the daily WordPress blog. So, for the fun of it, I’m going to try to write a few poems that incorporate both prompts. The first part of the poem (above) meets the NaPoWriMo challenge that springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about waking up, dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells but the topic was left wide open and so I took a different slant on it.

The second part of the poem (below) segues into the WordPress prompt entitled “Switcheroo,” that asks what blogger I would trade places with if I could. I’ve tried to make the two poems work either as single poems or as one longer poem. Tell me what you think. Does this work or do you prefer them as separate poems?

My Kindle lies upon the table,
still spewing words, if it is able,
from the book by Audible
that I heard was laudable;
so I chose it to listen to
knowing words would be but few
before I gave my thoughts to dreams
in short, imaginary schemes.

In sleep, I’ve pulled the ear cord tight.
It disconnected and tales took flight
into the air and so are gone
and my dreams become the song
whispered in my slumbering ear­­­­­­­­–
all that I dream and hope and fear
coming up to enter thought
revealing to me what I’m not
as surely as what I may be:
a page, a paintbrush and a tree.

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And so as I’m unwound from sleep,
I sit up, my date to keep
with that world I’m connected to
with cyber-nails and blogging glue.
Those who find the world absurd
might give pause to read a word
that I wed with more words ‘til
my dreams have finally had their fill
of eating up my conscious life.

Now that I’m no longer wife,
mother, an employee or
the keeper of a traveling store,
if I wish to spend my days
ensconced in a creative haze,
who is there to bother me?
I live alone. My days are free.

I would not trade with Heather Armstrong,
(Dooce.com) or Huffington,
for though more followers would be nice,
(Any blogger would like a slice),
still it is perhaps excess.
I don’t want so much success,
for much as I’d enjoy renown,
as far as being toast of the town–
I will remain just who I am.
I’ll take my blog without the jam!

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/switcheroo/

Propinquity

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Propinquity

There we sit,
side by side
again and again.
You in black,
I perpetually in vivid red,
slightly aslant
to your perfect
upright.

How is it
that we could meet
time and again,
liking the same things
not only so often,
but also with
such perfect timing
that it places us
side by side–

united so often
in proximity
and preference
in this cyber world,
when we will never meet
in the other.

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Don’t worry, Mark–I’m not about to turn stalker.  I’m just continually amazed at how often you view a blog just before I do.  We must be on the same erratic schedule.

Writing Habit

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The Prompt: Winning Streak—What’s the longest stretch you’ve ever pulled off of posting daily to your blog? What did you learn about blogging through that achievement, and what made you break the streak?

Writing Habit

I’ve written every day since April 1, 2014, except for yesterday, when I couldn’t get online all morning. I then got involved in working with the illustrator of my next book, who came to visit for two days to work on the covers. They are now finished, except for the lettering, and he’s done a wonderful job. Thrilling! I actually did answer yesterday’s prompt today and I’ve answered every other WordPress Daily Prompt since May, when I switched over from the NaPoWriMo prompt. I have not, however, managed to post a pingback to the WordPress Prompt page 3 or 4 times in the past and have not now been able to do so for the past 7 days, which is frustrating. I wonder if anyone reading this knows what the problem is and why some can trackback/pingback and others are unable to?

Blogging and the WordPress and other prompts have given me two things: a daily audience and pressure/permission to make writing a priority. I write every day, first thing, with very few exceptions. I now exercise in the late afternoon instead of the morning, giving me the entire morning to write if I need it. If I have activities, I get up early to write and sit waiting for the prompt like the parent of a teenager out after curfew.

I also sometimes post things I’ve written as a draft, waiting for a prompt to which they will relate. This serves as a backup as well, but so far I haven’t had any writer’s block. I think writing every day helps to prime the creative flow. I expect it to be there, so it always is. I also try not to censor myself. It’s necessary to let thoughts flow naturally. One can always delete or edit things later, but sometimes what feels not up to par when being written actually ends up being good. We need to give ourselves a chance and to be as supportive of ourselves as we are to our fellow writers.