Hey Babe, Wanna Increase My Downline?

Hey babe wanna increase my downline

This wouldn’t be the first time someone “posted” a “blog” on their “website” while having nothing to say. Well, not nothing exactly, but certainly not being sure exactly what he wants to say. But then that’s part of what a blog is, or was. Or maybe that’s just the bad kind; definitely it’s the old kind … nowadays I read posts and while I might still question the timing — why am I reading this right now when I should be reading Flannery O’Connor for the apologetics seminar I have to record, for instance — the value is often pretty decent.

Blogging has matured, which might be one of those “tallest building in Topeka” designations (or, if you grew up in the 1980s, this, at the 3:25 mark) but seriously, it’s improved. People with something to say are managing to say it, and find people who want to hear it. Focused blog posts, with calls to action, the array of sharing options, and followers in some cases in the 10s of thousands.

In other words, many elements absent from this particular post.

Because I feel pretty good about starting to figure all this out. Yes. Starting. Blogging has changed — and so have I, because at one time I would never even have used the word blogging. And just when I’m starting, maybe feeling like I’m already a pretty good writer and won’t just talk about myself all the time, but will find ways to connect with people … with you … something else starts happening.

I’m getting serious about my writing.

’bout time, huh?

Several authors are to blame for this, including Walter Brueggemannm, as well as Craig Barnes, and the above-mentioned Miss O’Connor. There is also the work and example of Rich Mullins and a book by Lawrence Thornton on what telling the truth actually is.  Just as I begin “blogging,” I find that I shouldn’t be writing any ol’ thing.

Blogging itself has moved forward
I am daily getting older and older
Now comes seriousness to afflict

Long story short, if it’s not too late, the last 24 months, and particularly the last 2-4, have conspired against me to say to me that the things I really want to say to you are the things I should really try to say … which is to say, the things I should write.

God is in it, too.

I am certain.

Still tempted, and have succumbed, to the desire to tweet every time I learn a new word, or string a few hundred of them together in a blog post, or a few thousand of them together in an eBook. But today I saw this, on Twitter, from Rich Tatum:

Asking ‘How can I use Twitter to market product?’ is like asking,
‘How can I use your dinner party to grow my downstream network?’

There is still too much of this, hence my title on this post. We’re all out scrambling for dates and trying not to look desperate. Kings of the Dipshits one and all, and far more kings than subjects, it seems like. Well it’s not the truth but yeesh, c’mon people … do we even want it to seem like it is?

All this together means, roughly, find a way.

But why shouldst thou care? This post, while offering value, including relevant and helpful links, and not going on too terribly long, is it anything that should matter to you?

If you are a true fan, or going to be, then yes.

This could end up very good indeed, for you.

For starters, I’m interested in what you think.

Please write and tell me.

Recent

Subjective, Objective

The other day I wrote on a wing and a whim … and misremembering. Or as Prufrock put it, quoting Woman —   That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. Nearly nothing I recalled happened in that way. Except of course the recalling. And a bit more. Wasn’t

Read More »

People do the Craziest Things

Adam — did he do what he did for love? Did he say, ‘I will join her; I can’t bear to be without her.’ — is that how it went down? He at after Eve; was it because he’d rather skulk around the earth a sojourner and pilgrim at the mercy of the people in that

Read More »

Time and Treasure

Saw an episode ages ago of one of the Twilight Zone reboots which, I’m pretty sure, starred Mark Hamill as this weird kid who collected toys. All this kitschy stuff from the ‘50s and grew up collecting them — and thus stayed weird and for the most part apparently lonely for his life entire. Of course

Read More »

Ensamples

Among the worst things about The Slap is how it has fed self-righteousness in all but the two participants, and they already had it or it wldn’t have happened. But there is Solzhenitsyn, again, with the line between good and evil that cuts through every human heart, and there is Dostoevsky, always, reminding us via

Read More »

Random

Christ on a Postage Stamp

Got to thinking on postage stamps today bec hadda mail a book to a friend and when you go in you hafta say to the guy, no matter what your actual business is that day, and of course you’re already saying it if you went in for this purpose — ‘What first class stamps d’ya have?’ It’s

Read More »

Finding Level

Relationship finds its own level. Generally it looks like we [and others] choose — a boy’s entreatment rejected, an attorney makes partner, 158 million of us vote — but there is a finality to much that we ostensibly do. This is how such absurdities as determinism gain purchase, how authors can talk and be misunderstood

Read More »

In The Heart of the Drunkard

And away he went, to drink the value of his cross … I have been listening to Fyodor Dostoevski’s The Idiot on the iPhone, from Audible.com. It’s incredible. I just know I’ll have to read it as soon as I’m done with the audio. [I do irk myself somewhat on having become such a fan

Read More »

Drudge Report

Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she

Read More »

Related

Functionally Illiterate Christian

Every few years I realize how wrong I’ve been. People who know me are faster on that, and even temporary acquaintances pick up the signals pretty quick, and I do the same for them. All this has happened before, and it will all happen again, the line goes. But this time it happened in …

Read More »

One Question, Two Answers

How to be really great Your life will be immeasurably great — incalculably awesome — if you put others in place of … you.  We will be great if we put others before us.  That is, if we put them first. One week at church, a pastor culled some points from a book on Christian

Read More »

What Men Want

In an office of the U.S. Postal Service this morning, a morning show deejay played clips from last night’s Leno and … I forget now, but prolly was a guy after Leno, on the same network. Come to think it, maybe they own the station, and the whole shtick — supposedly hey you might have

Read More »

The Walmart Fairy

Want to know when you can be sure the economy is in the turlet? It’s when even Walmart’s not hiring. According to this item, the company has hired essentially nobody for the last six years. Nobody says it’s since the bankers ripped us off again and the government let them, and all the oceans stopped

Read More »