Doesn't Add Up

Some days, I think my blog posts are really long. Then I compare them to The Simple Dollar, Jen Hatmaker, Penelope Trunk, or (if I'm desperate, the fallen-from-grace-since-JD-left) Get Rich Slowly, and I realize that my posts are actually rather short.

They just happen to take a long time.

I get an idea, write it out, fine tune it, then set it aside. Then I re-write the introduction, which means I break the joke set-ups and have to re-build the whole thing. When I think it's almost good enough to post, I have my wife read it. Her reaction (or lack thereof) makes me remove the lame jokes¹ and fine tune the rest, word smith, and generally trim. At this point it would be funny to say "and then I re-write it all over again," but I don't, because now it's brilliant and it makes my wife laugh. It's also very different from my rough draft. From the first draft to the final, I probably keep about 70% of my ideas and 35% of my wording.

I take all this time because I hate the idea of putting something out there that can be criticized legitimately².

Not to mention that the whole world would fall apart if somebody left a joke in the comments that was funnier than my blog. True, it's not much of a risk for a blog that averages just under one comment per post, but someday I'll be famous and people will go back and read my archives and leave comments, and I need to be funnier today than the iPhone's Auto-Troll app will be twenty years from now³.

I didn't do all of that this time. This took about 45 minutes of time that I was supposed to spend doing something else. So, enjoy at your own risk.


¹ Yes, the jokes you see all cleared that hurdle.
² I define legitimate criticisms as the ones that make me feel bad.
³ You know this is going to be one of the first commercial uses of Artificial Intelligence capable of real human conversation.