This blogging is a humbling business.
An inspiration flares up from within. Thoughts, ideas, associations coalesce. You start writing and before you know it a page is filled (a page on the iPad that is, at font size fourteen.) You take frequent steps back to gain perspective, marveling the while at the flowering prose, the effervescent humor, the trenchant, penetrating acuity.
It’s finished. You reread it, buffing and polishing as you go.
Finally, it’s ready. Breathlessly, you take in what you have achieved—no… what you have only served as amanuensis for! Awe and wonder wash over you.
You upload it to WordPress, tack on a title, slot it into a dozen of your categories (how limit the all-encompassing?), and tag it with as many tags as your conscience permits. Then, after a hushed pause—your finger hovering—you click ‘publish’ and away it goes for a billion odd internet users to gape and gawk at and attain to utter and complete enlightenment.
A sidebar pops up congratulating you on your two hundred and thirtieth post. You click on your main page to see how it looks and do a final edit. After the last correction you lean back and bask in admiration and self love. How can this latest post of yours’ be read with anything other than astonishment and disbelief? You cannot help likening it to Martin Luther’s clarion call for revolutionary change when he pinned his 95 thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg and inaugurated the Reformation that would remake Europe. Phrases such as “paradigm shift we’re all craving for” and “hundred years of bloody internecine war” spring to mind.
You click on the WordPress home page to admire your post up on the digital cathedral door and….
“What’s this?”
—It’s been posted over! Somebody’s published thirteen latest photos of their impossibly cute kitten Fluffy overtop of you!
“What the #^&¥!?”
The blog is called ‘Fluffy The Kutest Kitten,’ and it’s relegated your masterwork farther down the page…closer to oblivion!
Stunned, you click on the Fluffy blog. It’s as old as the damn kitten, one month, and you notice it has 2200 followers. The post was published four minutes ago and already there’s eighteen comments.
You check your own stats. Absolutely nothing. “That’s ok,” you tell yourself, “it’ll take time for the blogosphere to grasp the magnitude of what I’ve achieved.”
No point waiting around, you figure, might as well get some chores done.
Two hours later you’re back at the computer. Surely by now the Word is out! Surely by now the Internet is abuzz with the import of your post! Like sparks carried on the wind kindling fires everywhere, fires that grow into great conflagrations creating firestorms of change… surely by now your post has gone virile! (That’s a little in joke with my wife.)
But…. nothing. Only four hits.
Wait, there’s two comments! “This could be the start,” you tell yourself. One is for a knock-off handbag, the other promises to “extend and enhance performance,” presumably your blogs performance?
What about the WordPress homepage? Maybe there’s a chance…but there’s nothing. No trace whatsoever of your post or blog. Zero.
And Fluffy?
It’s not hard to find. Fluffy The Kutest Kitten is right in front of you, Freshly Pressed. You click on it. Immediately you notice it now has 2500 followers. The latest post has 173 comments and has earned it a cabinet full of awards.
You experience a moment of utter disgust. But you have to admit the damned cat is cute. And who’s to say it isn’t just as valid as your blog anyways? Maybe there’s a post in that, you tell yourself.
Your wife enters the room. “How’s the blog going?” she asks. “What’s your latest about?”
She prefers you to explain them rather than reading them herself. That’s ok, though, because her expression of interest has rekindled the fires. You warm to the topic, marshaling your images in order to astound and amaze her. You begin, your face animated and hands gesticulating….
“Well, you see—”
“HEY!” she exclaims, looking over your shoulder. “Is that Fluffy? I LOVE that blog! I follow it every day!”
You groan.
“Et tu, my Love?” you silently intone.
“Et tu?”
Omphalos Cafe 
I can’t stop laughing… but its so true! So sad, but so true.
Off to write a new masterpiece that will surely be buried under mountains of “fluffies” in no time.
Great post!
These things take time. Precious time. But it’s happening!
OMG! I’m still laughing despite coming over here to comment (takes time you know!). It is not only humbling but very confusing at times! Brilliant!
A big thank-you. But above all, this blogging is fun.
Story of my life!!!
You’re young, that’s your fault (no wait, that’s from the Cat Stevens song they’ve been playing at the local Starbucks)–there’ll be many stories in your life, and you’ll be writing them too.
Comedy writers will tell you how maddening a thing it is to throw an entire night’s worth of gold up on a wall and then watch it go up in flames to stupid pet tricks.
Just for the record, you have it ALL over Fluffy. I’m probably not making this any better.
Funny thing about writing humour… Ya, I know…. but, by the time you’ve mulled it over, laughed aloud, played it out, and written it down, it isn’t funny anymore, to you at least. It’s lost its freshness.
I WAS THINKING Of GETTING A CAT, YOUR BLOG HAS INSPIRED ME, I MAY JUST DO THAT.
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU AND THE FAMILY.
And then when you publish your cat blog let me know, I’ll include your site in my blogroll. Thanks, and all the best to you too.
Fluffy substance always wins the day!
But you have to keep on keeping on – what else is there to do?!
Thanks for that, and I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Now I’m off to read your post on Rabinidrath Tagore.
I hope you like the two stories – they are my favourites – but I didn’t go easy on Mr. Tagore in my commentary. You might find it a bit too acid for your taste!
Thanks for the visit!
As I said on your site, I enjoyed the background info on Tagore’s life, which I am not familiar with in any way. Too acid for my taste? Not at all. He was of his time and place. I am interested in how he came by the knowledge he did, though. Was the latter years of his life like say Tolstoy in his final years?