Invisible Ink or How Hope Dies

Now that the dust has settled in what used to be called the "blogosphere," it turns out that only around one percent of us are committed enough to continue blogging over time.

I consider myself an extremely unsuccessful blogger. Most of that is my own fault. I've refused to play by the rules, such as they are. Those rules are to specialize and concentrate on one subject.

Instead, I've yearned to blog about everything that concerns me, from politics to parenting to love to sports to the environment to hope and to hopelessness.

If this particular blog, one of many that I post to, has had any consistent purpose, it has been to work out a way to write my memoir. But, over time, I am moving further away from that goal, not getting closer.

One reason is that by posting here, I am slowly letting off the steam that if I kept it bottled up, might ultimately result in such an ambitious goal being met.

Instead, bit by bit, I let my memories of a life lived slip away here, into the ether, to a tiny audience, for no compensation.

I used to actually collect a small amount of ad revenue from this site, a few hundred dollars a year, but that was lost when one over-zealous fan clicked on the ads on this site from my home ISP address, and Google disqualified me.

That was two years ago, and I can never be reinstated, apparently, even though I had nothing to do with this calamity.

Such is life. It's often, in fact usually unfair.

Today, I met with one set of people who control my fate in another of my blog outlets about whether there might be a way for me to earn more money there.

No, there isn't.

How can I describe the way a writer's spirit starts to die? It's a gradual process. You have to start asking yourself, "why does any of this matter?"

I keep waiting for a brighter day. I have always embraced hope and believed in hope and tried to spread hope.

But tonight I feel a heaviness in my heart.

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