If the volume of messages in my email inboxes (personal and work) is any indication of my stress and “stuff going on” level, then the meter is rather high today. It’s not terrible, but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. If 12 is the average number of messages present at any given time, I’m more than doubly overwhelmed in my personal business (29) and more than triply overloaded for work (46 messages). That sounds about right.
Happy is here at work with me today, so that helps give me a bit of a distraction to everything that’s going on. Here’s a sampling:
– emails and calls from Jolene about the focus group
– meeting this morning and lots of follow-up from that
– plans tonight for a movie and possibly dinner with Jen, Ben, and Jess
– an email from Mikey about attending his cabaret benefit in a couple weeks
– a half-hour call this morning with a slow-talking realtor about buying a home
– another annoying realtor who keeps emailing me even though I’ve not yet had the chance to respond
– a third realtor to whom I need to respond
– thoughts in the back of my head to contact a mortgage broker and make a vet appointment for Happy Dingo
– straightening out this bowl saga with Shannon (an apparent can of worms that I opened)
Not that any of this stuff is bad. It just becomes a lot when it all hits at once. And, of course, there’s the whole impending prospect of war to deal with emotionally.
I’ve also been thinking lately about what makes a good blog. Or good writing for that matter. What draws repeat visitors somewhere? Surely it’s the content of interest and relevance that draws crowds, but also content that’s to the point, perhaps quirky or edgy. And then there’s the content that makes people think, challenges their views, or simply pisses them off. I updated my signature file yesterday to include a link to this page. Then I posted to my WRX Mods email group and noticed today that yesterday there was a spike in site traffic — with a total of 17 visitors, the most to date.
I thought: “Cool. People actually click on links in emails (I know I do). Imagine if I actually wrote about good, interesting shit here that people would actually come back to read.” Perhaps I’ll get to that point. Or perhaps I’ll continue to have the casual visitors.
My quest to bring you at least one funky link per day to keep my fiancee interested in this content brings us to The Candy Page, featuring an ominous yet catchy jingle: “Doughnuts…we love doooooughnuts.”
I stumbled across that page in an attempt to remember the name of an old candy Katie was talking last night, Abba Zabba.We went out for drinks at Olive and Tommy’s Joynt.
