Ryan Matejka's Blog: blogging

Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2021

What I've Been Up To

You'll notice by checking the "archive" part of the sidebar here that it looks like I only blogged twice in 2020, and that in general that I've been blogging less each year since 2014. With that being the case, you're probably wondering what I've been up to.

Well firstly, I actually blogged more in 2020 than any previous year, it's just that 43 of those posts were over in my second blog, Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles. In retrospect I kind of wish I'd just written those here instead of making a totally separate blog for them, but at least I got to play around with a different and more visual layout.

Secondly, I was and continue to be busy writing for Vertigo Gaming Inc. projects. If you haven't already checked it out, you should go ahead and buy Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!, which features a complete story written in part by yours truly, performed by a very talented voice cast.

Thirdly, I actually spent a decent chunk of last year planning, outlining, and drafting what I expected to be the feature blog post of the year—AKA the really long one that would be popular outside of my social circle. It was meant to be a follow-up to the My Experience Writing for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! post that would have gone in-depth in the development of the characters, setting, and plot of Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!.

In fact, I actually drafted most of the post, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wrong with it so I stalled in finishing it. In retrospect, it felt self-indulgent and unnecessary. Whereas my post about writing for CSD2 came from a genuine want to share a cool behind-the-scenes experience with people, the CSD3 version felt like I was writing it out of obligation rather than out of having any genuine must-share stories or experiences. Not that I don't have stories to tell or techniques to share, but writing a super long personal blog post about it just didn't feel right this time around.

Fortunately, I've been put in charge of writing the Vertigo Gaming Inc. newsletters this year and I've been encouraged by my team to write behind-the-scenes stuff. As such, instead of writing some extremely long and self-indulgent personal blog post, I'm able to write shorter, topical articles that are sent directly to our fans on a monthly basis. You can read them in the archive here, starting with the January 2021 newsletter.

Finally, I've also been working on some other writing projects that I can't talk about right now, but let's just say I'm still busy and always writing.

That all said, I'd like to write a bit more on this site in 2021. There are no guarantees, of course, but I've got some ideas I'm already itching to write.

Here's hoping 2021 is better than the dumpster fire of 2020!

PS: Interestingly, I haven't actually listened to Madonna at all since that extensive journey through her music that I blogged about in late 2019, in case you were wondering.

-Ryan

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

I've Got A Pandemic Blog!

Hey folks!

On the rare chance that you don't already know this, since I've been posting to social media almost every day about it, I've got a pandemic blog! Ryan's COVID-19 Chronicles is my new project to document this strange time we find ourselves in by blogging about how myself and my family are doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It started off as a daily blog back on March 20th, though I've recently been posting every other day or two due to a lack of major developments, so there's a lot of content to read if you haven't already!

Check it out and share your own story with me in the comments!

As for this blog, I hope to start writing a blog post about my experience writing for Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3!? soon. It's going to be a big one, so in the meantime feel free to check out my similar post about the previous game here.

Cheers!
Ryan

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Tips for Effective Blogging and Getting Hits and Stuff

Introduction

A while ago I wrote up a lengthy email to one of my coworkers with tips on effective blogging. Now, I know it may seem like I'm not an expert in getting lots of hits based on this very blog, but keep in mind that this blog is not currently designed to get lots of hits - it's literally just a place for me to shout out into the void whatever's on my mind, regardless of who cares. However, the few times that I have put these tips into practice on my blog, they have been proven to be effective in getting more hits. So I figured I'd share them with you guys, the void, as well.

Okie dokie, here are your lessons:

Blog About Something

Firstly, figure out what you want to blog about. What do you have expertise or interest in that other people will be genuinely interested to read about? This is where I failed, because I created this blog before thinking it through and figured I'd just write whatever came to my mind. Look where that's gotten me. Nobody cares about most of my posts after they're a month old because most of my blog posts are updates on my life and writing progress - things only my family and friends on Facebook really care to read about - but the ones that are most popular are the ones that offer the most amount of people with the most amount of value.

My all-time most read blog post is an advertising critique. Not only did I fill it with keywords to attract web searches, but it combines several topics that people are interested in reading; critique, advertising, smoking, and I may have mentioned the Superbowl at least once, which doesn't hurt my traffic either. My second highest is another ad critique, and my third is a review of the first Fifty Shades of Grey movie. There's a clear pattern here. People love reviews and critiques. They love when somebody is talking to them like friends used to face-to-face before the internet came along and changed the very fabric of social interaction. For a while my largest traffic came from Germans who really, really wanted to read about RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Not sure why Germans, specifically, but the point is that clearly people were feeling pretty nostalgic (and some game company has since taken advantage of that nostalgia and released a competitor game in the same style) and were looking to read about an old video game.

So, unless you're really, really, really good or already famous, don't write about yourself; pick a topic that is interesting to others. It can be broad (ex: "I review books") or narrow (ex: "I review every vampire book ever published") but it must be interesting to others. Bonus points if you pick a super specific niche and put yourself through agony for others' entertainment, like the aforementioned example of reading and reviewing every vampire book ever.

Utilize Your Metadata

Most of us don't want to spend money on advertising. That's why you'll want to work on your metadata. Metadata is the stuff that search engines (Google, GoDuckGo, and that other one) see and use to categorize your site. IE: use keywords. For example, my current meta description for my blog is "a blog about stuff" which is absolutely terrible, unhelpful, and I can't believe I got this far into lecturing you about how much I know about blogging and SEO when clearly I'm an idiot.

To reiterate, my blog is not currently designed to get hits. Do as I say, not as I do.

Ugh. Anyway. You want to change that to something descriptive and full of relevant keywords like, using the previous example, "books," "vampires," "fantasy," "review," and "reading." These are subjects that you intend to fill most of your blogging with, so that when someone googles "what's the worst vampire book ever written" your website has a better chance of showing up in the results. It will probably show up very low in the results at first, but write good content (more on that in a paragraph) for a while and give it some time. If you don't know where to find your metadata on your site/wordpress itself, put the URL of your blog into any one of those search engine spider simulators that you can find all over the web to find out what it currently is, then search around for how to change it on your domain.

Content is King, or Key, or Crucial, or Whatever

This goes back to what I was just saying above about selecting your topic. If you have something even as specific as "I review books" then you can skip this lesson because you have a good grasp on what you're going to write. Just write really, really good reviews.

If your topic is, despite my advice, less obviously valuable to others - like you want to blog about writing vampire stories - you may be wondering how you can possibly get people to care about little ol' you.

For that, I prescribe that you check out this post I wrote as an example. The post is designed to be like some sort of tutorial for people who are struggling to write the second draft of their novel, except it's really not that at all. That post, like so many others of mine, is just me rambling about the things I'm slowly figuring out in my own writing life. I just tweaked the concept from "here's what I learned" to "here's what you should know" - in doing so, I shift focus from me to you. People Google stuff like "help with second draft" all the time, so when they get to that page they're not reading about someone else struggling with the same problem, but someone who has a solution for theirs. (TWIST: I didn't know what the hell I was doing.)

So the lesson here is that even if you're blogging about you, don't make it about you. Figure out how you can turn your stories and experiences into something that can benefit others, because nobody is going to care about your struggles until you're famous for something and they want to read your detailed backstory so they can flesh out your Wikipedia page.

Oh yeah, and stick to a regular posting schedule so your readers can turn reading your blog into a habit. Be consistent. You want them to return regularly.

Keywords are also Key ... Words

Keywords are super important when writing. You want to include every possible thing that someone interested in your blog post might search for, so use a "related keywords" tool like http://keywordtool.io to find them. For example, if you want to blog about being a fantasy story writer; when I put "fantasy" into that site, I get "fantasy baseball," "fantasy baseball rankings," and "fantasy island" as the top three results, so make sure you don't use the word "fantasy" in your blogging without also including "novel" or "fiction" immediately after it. Specificity will lead to better results because you don't want to get your content mixed up with someone betting on their fantasy league.

Type in "fantasy fiction" into that site, scroll around, and you start to see some better results like "how to write a fantasy fiction novel." Although the actual statistics in these tools are typically locked behind a paywall, it's pretty safe to assume that that's a fairly common internet search by people who you want to visit your blog. Use that to your advantage. Include that phrase and others like it when you can without forcing it (ex: "when I first started learning how to write a fantasy fiction novel...") or just straight up write a blog post titled "how to write a fantasy fiction novel" and make it a really, really good post. Do you catch my drift?

Google is also a great tool for the same thing. Type "fantasy fiction" into Google and either don't press enter so you see the next suggested words or press enter and scroll to the bottom where you'll see:

Searches related to fantasy fiction:
fantasy fiction podcast
fantasy fiction books for adults
fantastic fiction books
fantasy fiction authors
fantasy fiction reddit
fantasy fiction youtube
fantasy fiction online
fantasy fiction podcast wiki

Which gives you a really good idea for what people are looking for when they search for "fantasy fiction" because those are Google's updated popular relevant searches - these are super valuable in telling you what people are looking for right now that you could be providing them with. Use those words and talk about those things whenever you can without sounding forced - rule number one is thou shalt not pander to the Google overlords, so don't just throw keywords into your post if they don't belong. Search engines will actually punish your site for trying to trick them like that.

Do More Research

It absolutely cannot be overstated that everything I'm saying here is really, really basic stuff and doesn't even cover all the rest of the basic stuff. If you really want to be a good blogger, go out and do some more research. Become an expert in your topic and in blogging itself. Maybe team up with some like-minded people to blog as a group so you share the burden and can utilize each other's talents.

Okay, I think that's all I've got for now. Hopefully this wasn't too boring, but I guess that's another lesson; DON'T BE BORING! Even if the subject is kind of dry, spice it up with your personality and photos you took of cute animals!

Best of luck to you!
-Ryan

Friday, March 18, 2016

Year Five in Review

Well, this blog is officially half a decade old. That means it's time for another "year in review" post. True to my promise at the end of year four (continue reading for details), I expect this post to be quite short compared to the last four.

Lacking Activity

The first thing any casual observer will notice is that year five was by far the least-active year of this blog. However, long-time readers (all zero of you) will remember that I kind of set out to do this at the end of year four. While I didn't explicitly say that I wanted to blog less frequently, I promised that I'd stop treating my blog like an extra job with a two-post-per-month and X number of views-per-post quota. Instead, I promised that I'd only blog when I felt the need to. It turns out that I didn't feel the need to very often.

So, What's Next?

More of the same, for now. While the latest content may not be of a broad appeal or arrive as frequently as it used to, it's more true to myself than ever before. As I'm growing up and my adult life is becoming increasingly more complicated, this blog has taken a backseat to completing the first draft of two novels and partaking in some freelance jobs for some extra cash on the side. I don't know about you, but I'm totally fine with trading in time spent on this blog for those accomplishments.

I also didn't blog about being a home-owner as much as I thought I would. I'd like to do more of that as my wife and I continue to work on and improve our home. I'm already late to talk about my first year of gardening and the time we repainted our bedroom, so maybe I'll get to that this year.

Otherwise, I don't really know.

-Ryan

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Year Four in Review

Seems it's that time of year again. Four years ago today is when I first posted in this blog, and I've gotten into the habit of celebrating the day each year by yammering on about what has changed and what my readers can look forward to in the future.

Blogging for Potential Employers

Having graduated college in 2013, the blog's focus shifted specifically to advertising myself as a dedicated writer searching for a career in copywriting. I cluttered the site with links to my online portfolio, résumé, and other work-related areas in an effort to make it easy for potential employers to find everything they'd want to find when considering me as a job candidate, and I blogged about non-controversial events in my life such as my wedding, what books I'd read, and how I went about writing fiction.

Blogging for the Masses

I obtained a full-time copywriting position in late September (having been a paid intern elsewhere since shortly after graduation) and realized almost immediately that the blog was due for another change. Rather than focus my content on the small group of people that I know in the real world and potential employers, I thirsted for a wider audience and experimented with turning my personal writing anecdotes into topical advice posts for other writers.

At the end of 2014, however, my blogging activities left a foul taste in my mouth. Everything I blogged in the last few months felt stale and useless. I realized that I needed to think long and hard about what type of content I had to offer, and in January of 2015 I wrote my first and fourth most viewed posts of all time, both of which were critiques of television commercials. While this seems like a success on the surface, I attribute the posts' record-breaking views to my aggressive social-media advertising of them rather than their actual public appeal (which I suppose is good, since I have a degree in advertising). At first I planned on writing similar posts throughout the year, but then my next epiphany hit:

Blogging With Passion

I realized that I wasn't posting on my blog because I wanted to anymore, but because I felt obligated to fill my self-imposed two-posts-per-month quota. Though I enjoyed poking fun at those two commercials in January, I didn't want to suck all the fun out of it by forcing myself to find more commercials to hate and writing about them twice a month. I instead decided to give up on my blog as a long-term high-priority project, and instead use it as it was originally intended; to talk about the things I feel passionate about, whenever that passion strikes. I started February off by blogging about a commercial that I love (so as to transition away from the negative commercial critiques) and then followed it up with a passionate defense of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie which is currently my second-most-viewed post ever (again, due to social media advertising).

So that's what you can expect from this blog in the future. Forget boring posts meant to fill a quota, and forget regularity. My life is rapidly changing, and keeping a boring, regularly-updated blog is no longer a top priority - I need to focus my quota discipline on my family and my fiction. Instead, I plan on occasionally blogging only about those subjects that get trapped in the synapses of my brain, building up with pressure until they explode through my fingers onto this blog. I plan to stress quality over quantity.
I plan to enjoy blogging again.

Now that I plan to post less frequently, it's an even better time to sign up for my email list to have new post notifications sent right to your email!
-Ryan

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Third Year in Review

Every year on the anniversary of the my first post on this blog I review how the year has been. This is slightly different than when I review the past calendar year, in that I focus more on a review of the blog rather than a review of my life.

Look how far I've come! - Original Layout & Content

As far as statistics go, I reached a record number of 460 views in one month this past October, however that was completely due to sites spamming my blog for hits, so that number is wildly inaccurate. I actually got between 110 and 180 views per month, and even some of those might have been spam hits. However, in total it looks like my blog has been viewed 4,328 times!

I've been posting at least twice a month (rarely more), and since last month I've been steering away from topical (yet personal) posts (such as my views on never settling for being just a statistic, or how it feels to know I'm getting married soon) and instead embraced posting in a journal-style about the my life. The change might be subtle, but it's been much more fun and easier on my end to just write about what's going on without having to try to make it mean something or revolve around a subject. After all, life doesn't work the same as a book does; there's no central theme or plot. Things just happen.

That's not to say that I want to just keep this as a public journal. I love writing about writing, I've kept my promise to myself to do a book review (though I'd also love to review movies, music, etc. whenever I'm inspired to do so), and have started cataloging my interesting dreams. I want this blog to explode outwards into uncharted territory and try out new things until I find what works for me and you. A lot has changed over the past three years, and this blog shouldn't remain the same until it grows stale.

Clearly it hasn't.

I don't know how long I'll keep up this blog, but I'd like to thank each and every one of you for reading it. Blogging has never really been about pulling in big view numbers, but instead I've enjoyed using it as a way to express myself, hone my writing ability, and document my life. It's cool to know that some people out there enjoy reading it.

Thanks!

-Ryan

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Second Year In Review

Two years ago today, I made my first post on this blog. One year ago today, I reviewed my first year of blogging.
Sadly I don't have a record high number of views in a month again, and in fact it seems that recently my readership is on the decline. This could be partially due to the fact that I stopped posting links to my latest blog posts on Facebook twice and now only link to them once each. Ironic that a guy in advertising has not been advertising as much, right?
However, I can say that I've now got over two thousand total page-views since the beginning, which is pretty cool.

This time I don't think I'll give a summary of the past year the same way that I did last time where I link you to almost every single article I wrote, because that's difficult and boring.
All you need to know is that I tried posting three times a month but teetered off when school started, got really worried about my future, and kept on blogging and writing fiction.

So, about the future; if you can't tell, I'm taking the site in a new direction ... again.
Originally this blog was complimentary to my website "The World in My Mind" and was called "Further into My Mind". Don't remember this? Here, I have a picture to prove it:

The original look and title of the blog.

I then decided to merge the website with the blog and call it "Ryan Matejka's Blog", partially to make it easier to read all my literature, and partially because that's my name.
The blog was entirely focused on my life as an aspiring writer. The subhead of the blog title even said "inside the mind of an aspiring author" and just about everything was about my desire to be a successful fiction writer.

The look before the most recent change.

As you could probably tell, things have changed. As my future adult life rapidly approaches, I have things to talk about in regards to my search for a career in, as well as the world of, advertising. As more things happen, I expect I'll also want to do some talking about what it's like being let loose in the world, being engaged and eventually married at such a young age, and occasionally what my new favorite book/movie/album is (it's been very hard to keep myself from reviewing random things that I like or don't like, maybe I should let myself).

I also have to keep in mind that, as somebody looking for a job in advertising, potential employers will be looking me up on Google to get a better idea for who I am. I want to show them that writing and advertising consume my life, and that I'm a creative and interesting, yet professional, person.
The layout, content, and appearance had to be changed.

The new layout is sleeker and more professional, the content is going to become much more varied than I originally conceived, and the subhead now reads "a place for me to say things to you" (because that sounded honest as well as silly). I want to talk not just about writing, but my life.
I expect it will be difficult to balance this professional look with a more loose form, but I think it's going to be fun to try.

Here's hoping you stay interested,
-Ryan

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Recording and Sharing My Life

From May 31, 2005 to April 3, 2012 I recorded my thoughts into a journal, which was made up of three black composition notebooks.

I didn't mean to stop, it just sort of happened, and when I realized it had been a while since I wrote I decided not to worry about it.

I didn't write in it regularly, you see, but only when it struck me that I had something to say or record. As life went on I realized that I had less to record or less ambition to record it, so near the end the gaps between dates in the journal got larger and larger.

I never really intended on keeping a journal. It just sort of happened. I was sitting in the classroom on the last day of 8th grade, looking around the room at the faces of all the people I'd spent almost a decade growing up with, wondering if I'd ever see them again. "Will they remember me?" I wrote.

I always thought it was poetic that I began my journal at the very end of the first phase of my life. The world of being a teenager awaited me, and I was already sensing the roller-coaster to come, especially since I knew that I was going to a high school with none of my friends.

I got hooked on writing my feelings and thoughts. Looking back on it, it makes perfect sense. I was going through a difficult time in my life full of puberty and all the internal and external drama that comes with it. I recorded my rebellious thoughts of distaste towards my parents, my insecurities as an awkward teen boy with acne, the time I got braces, the times I hung out with my new friends, and how it felt when I started dating my fiancée.
Keeping a journal was a form of therapy. A way of talking through my issues. No matter how small or embarrassing some of them seem now, I know they were important to me at the time.

Sure, life still has it's drama, but it's a different kind of drama. It's adult drama. Instead of worrying whether or not anyone could ever love me, now I'm worrying about getting a job and supporting the woman I love.

A part of the reason that I gave up on keeping the journal, I suppose, is that I've got this blog. And while I use it mostly to record announcements and thoughts about my writing, there are times (like this) that I love using it to detail some more personal aspects of my life. Sure, I don't feel comfortable blogging about some of the more private matters, but there are so many things I feel that I can share with those willing to read.

I've got several blank pages left in my last composition notebook, and the drama of graduating college is coming. I think I'll go back and finish it up.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for memories and I'm a sucker for inspiration in the form of real lives.
-Ryan

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

The College Forty

It has occurred to me that this blog has strayed in the past few months. I've been writing mostly about my writing, with the occasional other topics popping up here and there. While writing is a huge part of my life, it isn't the only part. I found myself thinking of this as more of a blog about writing instead of a blog about myself, and as a result I was often forcing myself to talk about things that just weren't interesting. (For example, in my last post, for some reason I decided to write about something I already wrote about.) While I do have a lot to say about the world of creative literature, it is not all I should be talking about.
So without further ado:

I've grown fat since college began. From what I've seen and heard this is not unique to me, but in a way that makes it an even better topic to talk about because it's so common.
At my most fit, I was about 130 lbs. sometime around the beginning and middle of my junior year in high school. This is mostly the result of being employed as a cart pusher at a busy grocery store, as I remember that I had apparently lost some weight as a result (and the doctors were worried it was diabetes, which runs in my family).
Here's a photo taken around that time:

If I am correct, this is not exactly me at my thinnest, but shortly after. However it is the only photo I can find that shows my entire body. As you can see I am a proud and awkwardly skinny teen. In other photos I seem almost to be too skinny; as though my structure was meant to be heavier.

So what happened? Well several things contributed to my gain of weight. Firstly is that I quit my job as a cart pusher to become a dishwasher at a restaurant. Secondly I started dating for the first time and met my now-fiancée, and apparently studies have shown that men tend to subconsciously eat more when around women so as to impress them. Thirdly I grew addicted to ice cream and had found lots of time to eat it. Fourthly I began college and was left to regulate my own diet, which I had decided would consist of only things that I knew I liked (as opposed to when my parents cooked new things for me that I would only eat half of if I didn't like it very much).

So now about four years after that photo was taken, here I am now:

I now weigh 173 lbs. and absolutely hate it. Let's get something straight though, I'm fully aware that I'm still totally handsome when viewed from most angles. What bothers me is that I don't look as thin as I feel. I feel like I should weigh no more than 150 lbs. and that I shouldn't be embarrassed to wear medium-sized shirts. What's worse is that I feel like I don't look like the guy that my fiancée deserves. My fiancée is taller than me and has maintained her thin figure the whole time I've known her. When we go out together I can't help but feel like we don't look right for each other.
Of course this inevitably leads to me feeling like I don't deserve her.
I don't intend to just whine about this. For more than a year I had been trying various forms of exercise to work it off, but to put it bluntly I was doing everything half-assed. At one time I was jogging half a mile every other day, and then I gave that up to do a few push-ups and sit-ups every day, and then I told myself I would bike to work every day but gave that up when the summer got too hot.
I honestly haven't seen any progress.
Instead of letting this get me down and trick myself into thinking "I just can't loose it, so why bother trying?" I've become more and more determined to look good for my girl. I bought a scale that tracks my weight and tells if I've lost or gained compared to the average of the last five times I've checked, I've started going to my apartment complex's exercise room more regularly (usually every day) to run at least a mile and do some weight-lifting and other physical stuff, and I've been researching the best ways to boost my metabolism without going on any commercial diets.

I'm making this public because keeping it private meant keeping my failure private. I need people to know what I'm trying to do so they can tell me if I'm doing it wrong and tell me when I'm failing. I need people to keep me in check.
My ultimate goal is to get down to 150 lbs. in time for my wedding, but since that's still over a year away let's say I want to be down to 150 lbs by my next birthday. If I didn't have school or a job and knew my way around a gym this would be a piece of cake, but I have limited time and limited knowledge so I expect it to be a slow process.

This will be my birthday present to myself.
-Ryan

Monday, March 19, 2012

The First Year In Review

One year ago Today, this blog's first post went live.
In it I talked about the very first blog I started, and why I was starting this one. I expressed that I did not expect anyone to find it interesting to read when I said: "So maybe I have high hopes and low expectations, but isn't that what a lot of great achievers start out with? A dream with a lack of confidence?".
I am happy to report to my past-self that last month I had a record high of 161 views, compared to the 40 I had in my first month, I'd say that's progress.

My First Blog ("Yackemflaber" is my web name)

It was after that post that I immediately got into talking about my novella, which became somewhat of a long-running subject of my blog for the past year.

I also enjoyed scattering in some of my philosophies on certain subjects within writing. I even played around with talking about a childhood favorite video game. Sometimes I even confessed about something from my personal life.

Also in the past year, this blog has undergone some pretty notable changes, among them is that I changed the name, merged it with my website, and added twitter.

I believe this image is relevant yet again.

Believe it or not, with everything I've done, there are actually two blog posts that never saw the light of day. One was never written but was going to be a book review for one of my recent favorites, and one actually a pretty significant and mostly-finished post about how a particular idea of mine was drastically changing and taking shape before my very eyes.

So what's remained the same among all these changes? Well I still write in a personal journal as often as I can (though that's becoming less and less often it seems), I still have a passion for writing, I still have a passion for my fiancée, and I still love blogging.

So what do I see in the year to come? Well I hope my readers will be pleased to know I intend to do more of the same, and maybe try a few things I didn't get around to trying last year (like the book review, does anyone have an interest in reading that sort of stuff?). I also hope to upload even more content to the story, poem, and humor pages (though that all depends on dozens of factors). I'd even like to try doing something with videos in my blog, even if it's just linking to one of my recent YouTube videos and going on about it.

This photo is here for the sole purpose of keeping your eyes interested.

Lastly, I'd like to blog even more often in the next year. I currently average 2 blog posts a month, but would love to bring that up to three or four, which I think will be very possible because I typically have a lot to talk about, and maybe that means expanding this blog to talk about my other hobbies more (like video games, books, and movies), but we'll leave that up to time to tell.

Happy First Anniversary to this Blog! May there be millions more!
-Ryan

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Over 100 Monthly Views!

I have some fantastic news to share! As of this month, November 2011, I have surpassed 100 views in a single month!

Now I admit I have no idea if these are all unique views or not, but the fact of the matter is that this is still an achievement for my small blog. The exact number of views prior to this post is 115, here are the facts (click the image to enlarge):

As you can see, the last time we came close to touching the 100 view line was in April. The largest reason for April being so "successful" despite being only the second month of my blog is that in April I posted three major posts and one minor update. This makes November's success even greater because (until this post) I have half as many posts for the month, which is the number I've been trying to maintain for each month, but even more views than in April!

So I would of course like to thank all of you who read my blog's every update, and I would love to especially thank those who comment on my posts occasionally! As you can see the next major milestone will be to surpass over 1000 views total, so let's keep those views coming into the next month and all the way into my blog's future!

As a side-note I'll mention that I am officially done with the planned changes to my blog; I've brought over all the content from my website (and then some) and changed the name and URL of the blog so that everything makes sense and is all in one place. Of course I will always be trying to update the blog as much as possible to make it even better, but for now I have nothing major planned.

Thank you yet again.

-Ryan

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Bringing Things Together

I've been doing a bit more work behind the scenes lately, and if you cannot tell, the merger of the website and blog is complete!
I've simplified everything by merging the content of the website with the blog, and hopefully made everything easier to find that way.
I even added more content than what the website had, so feel free to check out what that is! I added a second short story in the "Stories" section, added a new poem called "Poetry is Hard" in the "Poems" section, added 9 full-color comics and a humorous short story to the "Humor" section.

Please leave a comment below telling me if any of the links do not work.

As a general update on progress on things, I'll admit progress has come to a halt over the past few weeks due to schoolwork and work, but that shouldn't last long with things like Thanksgiving and Christmas break coming up. Remember as always to check back here for updates on my latest projects!

Enjoy the content!
-Ryan

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Incoming Changes and Project

I've been pondering some blog-related things recently.
First and foremost is my blog's relation to my website. The reason they exist as separate sites is simply because at first I didn't have a blog, and didn't plan on having one. My website was supposed to simply be a place to digitally store and share my works of literature. As time went on I realized that having only a website wouldn't allow me to make updates as frequently as I wanted, and thus (among other reasons) my blog was born. Now that I've used Blogger for a few months I'm starting to see the potential for my blog to completely replace my website without losing any of the content, and it's also starting to seem ridiculous to not have my content accessible in the place that most people visit (Blogger tells me that there were 53 visits to my blog last month, whereas my website doesn't even have a way of telling me how many people visit it).
What exactly am I rambling on about? I want to merge the content of my website with my blog, essentially meaning that aside from being able to read my updates on this website, you will be able to read all my literature on it as well.

Somewhat related to this is the fact that I want to do something fun and new with my blog. I am not ready to shell out all the details yet (I will have an entire update dedicated just to that when I have it all sorted out) but what I will say is that anyone familiar or interested with my writing origins will be pleasantly surprised and enthused.

Too bad the title of this blog will make less sense without the website accompanying it.
-Ryan

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Experimentation

Summer is coming to a close and as usual I've not finished anything I wanted to finish.

"Only after disaster can we be resurrected"

Wait, nevermind; I finished a book. It was Fight Club, and it was awesome.

Anyway one of the things I want to finish before summer is up is the second draft/typed draft of my unfinished Lifelong Tragic Love Epic which, if you recall, I made a small realization about and is basically the only thing I've ever mentioned working on writing all summer, and progress has been slow.

Wait, nevermind; I mentioned that one short story I said I would finish by the end of last month if someone simply posted a reply to that post. Well guess what? Nobody did. I'm going to assume this is due to the Eyewitness Effect (or whatever it's called, I took that Psych class two years ago) and that nobody posted a response simply because they expected someone else to, and not that nobody posted because they were just too lazy or don't give a hoot about my stories. So yeah, let's pretend it's the first one.

Anyway I've been thinking about experimenting with writing recently, specifically by penning some short stories, flash fiction, messing around with artistic points-of-view and how it can be used to enhance the quality of stories, trying out some alternate settings, tones, and themes etc.
As you can see by the list, this is going to basically be a lifelong thing. But the point is I want to try some of the quicker things first, such as flash fiction, since I have dozens of simple scenarios or stories that I want to tell before I lose interest in them (and I don't think they can be stretched out into novel-length stories at all).

What does this mean for you? This (hopefully) means you'll start being able to read more than just the poems on my website. I plan to release this miniature content relatively frequently (by my standards, at least) so I can start getting some feedback for my experimentation.

Now I would love to go back and look over this post for errors in grammar, continuity and flow (did I need to bring up summer? I don't think that was relevant at all) but I've got to be going now as I must pick up a certain special someone from work and then prepare for a weekend-long vacation to a secluded, undisclosed location up north with that special someone's family. I really just wanted to blog this before then so I can come back from my mini-vacation to see all your wonderful views and posts (if there are, in fact, any at all).

[end motivational and/or philosophical-sounding statement]
-Ryan

Saturday, March 19, 2011

First Blog

Hello, my name is Ryan and this is my new blog.
Okay I suppose that's one way to start this off. I used to have a blog a few years back with some other service, and I found it to be incredibly fun even though only about three people read whatever I wrote. Why did I stop? The service that I was using ... stopped. Whether it was due to a lack of funding, users, or some personal matters, it was taken down. I didn't immediately try again because things started happening in my life, not necessarily good things or opportunities or anything like that, just things. I'm actually quite hard-pressed to remember what they are.


My First Blog

Recently the idea began popping into my head again. It's a cool thought that people may actually find what you blog about interesting and "follow" it. I also keep a private journal (which I don't update often enough) and I've always been interested in the response I would get if I made some of my thoughts or life events public. Still I wasn't certain that blogging was something I should be using my time for.

Then a week ago I went to go see a Career Counselor at my school in hopes of figuring out what I want to do with my life and my interest in English above any other school subject, and among more helpful suggestions was that I should write a blog. "People will read it" my counselor assured me "and it's a good way to get your voice out there and get noticed", and while my first thought was "easy for you to say, you have a position of status, people have to read your blog to figure things out. Who's to say anyone wants to know what's going on in my life?"
I reconsidered after she told me a success story of a friend of hers who started as a blogger who got noticed and now works full-time making a monthly newsletter with his wife "and he's doing quite well for himself" she finished. This was the icing on the cake; everyone assumes that any person with a degree in English will inevitably be broke and hungry while trying to scrounge enough money from recycled cans to pay the last month's rent, and here was proof to the contrary.

So maybe I have high hopes and low expectations, but isn't that what a lot of great achievers start out with? A dream with a lack of confidence?

I don't know exactly what I'll write about. I don't even know if I'll keep this up in the long-term. All I know is that I have a passion for three things: talking until my throat is soar, keeping a record of my thoughts, and a certain someone who supports and loves me in spite of the former two.

This is my life ... blogged.
-Ryan