Wow! Thank You All!

What a wild Monday! Let’s recap how I got here:

March hit me with cabin fever like a tactical nuke. Blocked out of the forest and sick of being indoors, I found myself sitting on my ass in a coffee shop. I completely failed to write the reasoned, intelligent, thoughtful post I thought the world might want. I wound up watching Wall-E, or rather smiling that a little girl’s innocent happiness wasn’t thwarted and that her mom knew how to set priorities.

Given this golden example, I used a blog donation as my excuse to coax my long ignored dirtbike to life and wallow it through icy mudpits. I wrote about it without any particular thinking behind my actions.

It was a wise move. I was happy as a pig in shit; cold and muddy but contented. Then the weather turned cold, as I knew it would. I decided the internet wasn’t going to help my malaise. I tuned out for four or five days. Who needs a world of blackpills and bickering?

Today, I tuned back in. To my surprise, my blog received a delightful smattering of donations in my absence! Y’all must have liked my goofy little bike ride too?

The response certainly improved my mood! It’s especially good juju during the muddy, icy, inaccessibility of spring breakup. (If you live far enough south to not know what “spring breakup” means… be happy and bask in the glow of your advanced spring.)

I want to thank everyone personally, hell I practically wanna’ give y’all a hug. I also want to preserve anonymity. So here’s a quick rundown but with hardly any detail; y’all know who you are.

Rob B gets the first tip o’ the hat because he has cosmic timing. He sent me a twenty even before I knew I needed it. His was the excuse I needed to buy a half gallon of gas (tiny dirtbikes don’t need much fuel) and seek a trails pass (the office was closed but who cares, the excuse to get the bike out of mothballs was the important part). Well done sir!

John D read the tea leaves and sent a bit. He did so pretty quickly. It was routing though banks or whatever probably before the non-existent, virtual, ink was dry on my happy little “fuck it, I rode my motorcycle” post.

R. M. followed up with a nice donation that has me thinking of a thousand things I can do in the approaching spring. Thanks!

The good news showed up as Patreon or Paypals’ auto-generated notes in my e-mail. Then I checked with “buy me a coffee” (it’s neat that musing about “second coffee” set things in motion). Another surprise!

“Buy me a coffee” is semi-public (somewhere between social media and social media adjacent) so I don’t think I’m “outing” anyone. If I do, sorry.

Bustednuckles (who I assume is The Vulgar Curmudgeon?) told me to quit fretting and buy that second coffee. Thanks man!

Joe Henderson sprung for a couple coffees too.

Then “Someone” became a “coffee” member. A real living “Squirrel Fanatic”! How cool is that? It got my mind thinking of the Squirrels… more on that later.

This was followed by “bob” who sprung for a few coffees too. Thanks!

There’s something I want to say before all this sinks into the “scrum of the internet” (not the best analogy). I know that there are “influencers” that rake in far more in a day than I will in a year; but that’s never been my goal. Those “influencers”… they wind up weird. They chase “the algorithm” until they become the algorithm. I’d say the same of YouTube. Whatever corporate behemoth is behind YouTube’s shenanigans (Google?) randomly “demonetizes” people. It is so aggressive that there’s a word for “demonetize”. It encourages “content makers” to self censor themselves into blandness. Such are hazards I wish to avoid.

I took a different path. I write whatever the hell I want. I hope folks notice but I don’t “market” or “optimize SEO” or anything like that. I put up donation and coffee links but mostly assume I’m pissing into the wind amid a cold and uncaring world. The advantage of all this is twofold:

1. I freak out with joy over every single donation. Every time it’s like Christmas.
2. I learn and re-learn again, over and over, that most folks are just plain nice people.

The second point is huge! I don’t get a lot of attention. I don’t get a lot of comments. I don’t get a lot of “hits”. But I get absolutely no negativity.

Remember when the internet was like that? A new and more or less civil place of discourse? Remember normal people happily chattering away like it was a big goofy CB radio? Remember before social media fried everyone’s mind? Well it still exists. At least here it does. I hope you all sense it too. Thanks!

One last thought. I was speaking with a fellow recently who has been a chain smoker forever. He mentioned that he hadn’t had a cigarette in months. I said “Oh that’s great, you quit smoking!”

He said something that has a lot of wisdom in it. “I don’t know if I really quit smoking. I’m reluctant to claim victory until I know.”

I congratulated him on the months he’s made it so far but I get what he’s saying. Nobody knows what the future holds.

I do something similar on my blog. I’ve got a thousand ideas cooking that are interesting. I should write about them but I’m reluctant to mention half assed ideas on my blog; I hold out until they’re “full assed” ideas. (See what I did there?)

I hesitate to mention something that sounds cool, even as I pursue it; at least until I know it’s going to work. I think that’s a flawed thinking. The fun part of every adventure is when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Will I get to Wyoming? Will the cheap, tiny, underpowered TW200 handle the WYBDR?” I didn’t say until I was more or less back home.

“Was I going to successfully build a sailboat and ramble around the middle of nowhere like Huck Finn?” I didn’t say until it worked out. (Best sailboat ever!)

I made a New Year’s Eve resolution to not be so “guarded”. I’ll start to put that in play. I’ve got some cool shit planned. I’ll endeavor to write about it even when it’s still in the “potential crash and burn” stage. Everyone is so nice. I will reciprocate.

The internet is awash in negativity and emotional tantrums; but that’s not here. This blog is for nice people!

Thanks!