May Day Means Library Books

That's right. After my physical therapy today (which consisted largely of lying on my back while a hot nurse massaged my neck - I don't understand why more people don't like PT), I went to the library and checked out a slew of books related, however casually, to my internet-based... internetting. Stuff. Thing.

• Gobs and Gobs of Free Stuff - Matthew Lesko
• Find it Fast: How to Uncover Expert Information on Any Subject - Robert I. Berkman
• Guerrilla Marketing for the '90s - Jay Conrad Levinson
• Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 2nd Ed. - Scott Mueller
• Art School: An instructional guide based on the teachings of leading art colleges - ed., Colin Saxton

Most of these are pretty old, so I'm not exactly expecting to no longer have time to babble incessantly - either here or on any of the other blogs - but I figure the upside to the whole thing is that I can just skim over the stuff I already know and there will likely be quite a bit of that. The way I see it, any little nugget o' knowledge, any single grain o' truth, I can glean from any of these tomes makes it worth the effort.

I got the Art and design book specifically for the site. I have a good, solid Art background, and I intentionally decided to go against the "expert advice" most everyone had about web design. I did this because basically every website I've seen over the past few years looks pretty much like every other website. And the reason for this is because everyone who puts up a website goes along with what these self-proclaimed "experts" say is The Way to do it.

I don't measure success in terms of money; most people (Americans, at least) do. Different projects have different goals; my goal with this blog is specifically to talk about writing, teach some "n00bs" how to blog, and hopefully connect with others who enjoy these things. Making a (very) little extra cash on the side is a bonus - one I'm certainly not averse to, but still just a bonus. I started The Rundown because I wanted to get back into comics and gaming and I figured I'd share my interests with others, plus I thought it would keep me going when my interest started to wane - and it has! I consider both blogs a success.

I don't consider The Weirding a failure, even though I haven't met the goals I had for it when I set it up. I knew it would take time and effort and there have been a lot of setbacks along the way over which I simply had little or no control. As I reported elsewhere, I'm going shopping for a new computer this weekend and I'm specifically building one for the Web and website design/maintenance. I'm hoping things pick up once I've done so.

Anyway, we'll get back to more on Blogging the Write Way and much more tomorrow. In the meantime, I have a whole lot of reading to do!