Curiosity

It's very strange to me that I can write a long winded rant about the troubles I have riding the train in the morning or how much I hate my brutal alarm clocks or how much I despise my cubicle life and get huge numbers of readers; but when I write a story, a story that I really like and think others will as well I only get eight readers.  It's baffling.

Maybe I'm just not that appealing as a short story fiction writer. Maybe folks see the title or the intro and are like, "Oh boy, here's another story about some hapless loser who gets lucky or dies or gets eaten by the thing living under the bed". I just can't imagine that my complaining or my raving gets a better readership than my stories.

I suppose it's just one of those "things" that can't be explained. Like comfortable shoes or why women always pick the jackass doofus over me. They are just things that can't be explained. Maybe people just like hearing about how I always have to make coffee in the morning or how I have this weird facial twitch today. I just can't explain it.

I'm glad people seem to value my hysterical opinion or respect my introspective accounts of daily life. I'm not turning a blind eye to any of that. I do appreciate the readers I have and I thank each and every person that tells me that they read what I write. I'm pleased to hear that people are reading what I write, but it is sort of a let down to spend a lot of time working on a very long detailed story only to find out that only a few people saw it or even read it. It's just sort of a weird let down.

I actually never really have any expectation that anyone will read what I write, but when the numbers fluctuate so wildly between stories and essays, it gets a little confusing. Really, I got more readers for my piece about how I don't have time to write a full piece than I did for a full piece. It's mind boggling.

In any event I'll continue to do both and hopefully I'll hit upon the magic elixir that is not only entertaining but also slightly profitable. I say that not because I'm greedy, but because I sincerely hate my cubicle life and would rather get paid to write stories than write boilerplate letters to some old woman telling her that her claim is denied because her fall was the result of her being old and not from the clear and dry floor or the rapid rotation of the Earth.

By the way Dark French Roast coffee and Coffeemate Irish Cream, not too shabby. Not great, but not shabby.