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As promised in my last post, here it is:

LAZY AND HAZY’S TWELVE STEP PROGRAM FOR STARTING A BLOG

Step 1

Decide to start a blog. Once you do this, you will need to do absolutely nothing to move forward with it for about two years. As I discovered, with tasks requiring several steps to complete, you can coast along for quite awhile on just the deep sense of accomplishment gained by completing Step One.

Step 2

Brag about your exciting new blog to everyone you know at great length. Drag this out for as long as possible before moving on to Step 3, which will inevitably require some sort of researchy, paperwork-laden chore (this is why I rarely make it to Step 3 of anything). Be prepared with answers to inquiries like “Cool! What’s your blog called? What’s it about? Can I read it?”  I found it best to answer these questions one of two ways, either: “It’s abou…oh! I think that’s my cell. I have to get it. I’m expecting a really important call from my (broker, lawyer, doctor, etc.). No, I had it on vibrate – so you wouldn’t have heard it ring.” or “Oops. I am so sorry! What a shame you’re wearing white. You’d better go wash that out right away before it sets.”

Step 3

Consult the experts. Amazingly, in this case I did get around to Step 3 of the painful process and read (well, skimmed) through a number of publications on blogging by so-called blogging experts for general bloggy tips. According to these experts, who have written pages and pages of dreary prose the subject, it’s important to: find a niche; determine the theme of your blog; provide a welcoming atmosphere; adopt a friendly tone; write in a clear style that avoids run on sentences; and include lots of pictures, videos and links. 

Step 4

Decide to follow none of the expert tips above and just do whatever you come up with yourself because the experts’ way involves way too much dull reading.

Step 5

Face the biggest challenge of all – a decision about that single, all-important, critical thing that can make or break the success of your blog: The Title. In writing, the title is the most important thing. Other people may tell you that it’s the content that matters. That’s nonsense. Blog experts unanimously agree that a blog title should be clear and simple to easily convey to readers what your blog is about. It’s obvious that they never came across the book “Moby Dick” which is widely considered to be one of the great American novels, but sounds a lot more like cheap porn than a deeply reflective work of immense complexity, fraught with metaphor and symbolism, and a nifty first line to boot. At least that’s what I’ve heard about it – I haven;t read it myself. Or, what about “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I read that one and there were no birds in it of the mocking or any other variety or instructions on how to do away with them. The acknowledgement that titles are incredibly important but also incredibly misleading counts as facing the decision to decide on one and also as the completion of Step 5.

Step 6

Begin the agonizing process of brainstorming for a title. Since the blog experts are wrong and, in reality, people expect misleading titles, you need to come up with the perfect, misleading blog title.  

Step 7

Continue brainstorming, which, I can tell you, is no walk in the park. Its months of walks in the park – with no time to notice the trees and flowers or that someone’s dog peed on your shoe. While you agonize painfully over this potential title or that one, minutes that can never be regained tick away – minutes that could have been spent eating chocolate, liking posts on Facebook, or eating more chocolate.

Step 8

Complete the brainstorming process. If it ends the same way for you as it did for me, what you will have produced are: no blog titles, a notebook full of unusable, swirly doodles and a very large (and hopefully deductible) folder of receipts for grande soy lattes.

Step 9

Take a break and do something relaxing that will not tax your mind. For a long time, what with the title being such a huge obstacle in my path to Blogdom, my brain was completely frazzled and I was in danger of having nervous breakdown. It took weeks and weeks of Candy Crush to get myself back to place where I could just barely cope with moving on to…

Step 10

Change your mind. It’s a blogger’s prerogative. If it takes this much time to come up with a title and you still haven’t got one, it’s okay to conclude that this was a big waste of time and the title isn’t that important after all.

Step 11

Depend on the kindness of strangers (or friends – whoever you see first). With the title no longer mattering so much, you can just ask the first person you see to come up with one for you. You may, as I did, have to ask a couple of people. Then you can just throw all of the suggestions into a bag and pick one.

Step 12

Conquer the final hurdle to building a blog. The blog experts are correct this time when they point out that, due to the disappointing inability of those who read blogs to also read minds, there must be a way to get all of your bloggy content out there into cyberspace to be read. They are wrong, however, in their belief that you must acquire a lot of horrifying technical knowledge in order to make that happen. All you need to acquire is this: Go to the nearest Chinese restaurant and stock up on lo mein, chow fun, and fried rice and find a geeky significant other, friend, or acquaintance with technical knowledge. Techno-geeks love carb-laden Chinese food as much as they do working on computery, internetish stuff. One of these is bound to get a whiff of goodies and will happily offer to take care of anything tech-related for your blog for nothing more than a quart of lo mein. It’s a fair trade so you can even slap a Fair Trade label somewhere on your main blog page to let everyone know how socially conscious your blog is so they can feel really good about reading it no matter what it says. Just don’t make the mistake I did and choose a spouse as your techno-geek helper. Unlike other techno-geek assistants, who will do as you tell them without wondering why, a spouse is likely to become too involved in areas of the blog that don’t concern them, throwing a lot of annoying comments and questions at you like “What are you using that picture of us for?” or “Are you writing about me?” and other things they have no business knowing. You will waste a lot of time repeating phrases like “Never mind that – just get the f…ing picture on the f…ing page!” This can slow the process down quite a bit. It’s one thing for you to take your sweet time with things, but the hired help should snap to it!

If you made it through this Twelve Step program, congratulations!  You have now become the proud owner of a blog in a mere 4 years time. For those of you who were unable to follow through, I have created a shorter Quick Step Pictorial version (perfect for millennials who communicate in texts and soundbites) of this program, which I will put in my next post. Keep in mind that the shorter time required to peruse the steps will not mean a shorter time for completing them.

 

Until…whenever

Lazy and Hazy