A Year of Z

Well, it's been a year.

I embarked on this little writer's sojourn in November of 2024 in an effort to recapture some bygone mojo that hath, in recent years, been untimely sapped of me.

"It doesn't have to be good. It just has to exist."

So here I am, to write about writing.

What this process has been like. How it has gone. And where I think it's going.

I'll try more original art moving forward, instead of the cheap and easy but vague and soulless AI art heretofore.

First—some housekeeping:

I am thankful for an amusing muse who, upon reading their works, reconjured a desire in me to delve back into this kind of writing again.

I write by trade. But very impersonally.

I write as a hobby. But somewhat formulaically.

So to write in a third mode, as a way of expression and self-discovery, has been something of a 'palate cleanser' for me. It's a gear I have repressed since I first began to take writing seriously. 

Why repressed? Because this "looser" style of writing swerves around discipline, and writing without discipline can create bad habits. 

Now, years later, the writing I do for my "day job" is all-discipline, no-experimentation. I thus crave a little novelty.

And in reading another writer's work that felt a bit more vulnerable, exploratory and investigative, I felt inspired.

For that spark of inspiration; again, I say thanks. I wish I could return the favor.

Next—some acknowledgments:

They say a writer must recognize his audience. And I have. I read you loud and clear.

It turns out that, yes, I do have a niche. My writing does have a target demographic. I have a readership that I speak to.

The data are in and the results are clear:

My writing is for bots.

It's fair to say that over 90% of my traffic comes from zero-engagement sessions with 1-second durations from Lanzhou, China; Singapore; Bengaluru, India; Ashburn, Virginia and Hyderabad, India.

In fact, out of approximately 100 unique "visitors" and thousands of "visits" in the past calendar year, I suspect only three—perhaps four—are flesh and blood human beings. And that includes me.

Among the other possibly human visitors I've gathered, all but one surely navigated to this page by mistake. The "bounce rate" is damning (though I do take some credit for the "bounce height").

If you "are what you eat," then by that same logic you might also "be what you attract."

My writing is a honeypot for web crawling bots. I can have my misgivings about this audience I've curated, but I can't argue against its truth. May as well just embrace it.

What you're seeing here is a feeding ground for automated online bots to harvest for analytical data.

And I'm here for it.

Why do I mention this?

In 2012, when I returned back to my hometown in Arizona after an "unsuccessful" year spent on Las Palmas, Avenue in Hollywood, California—an exodus that might warrant a deeper dive in a future post—I felt as though I had been delivered a pretty clear sign that signaled what I was not.

I had gone to pursue a career which did not take root. Therefore, having to return more or less "defeated", penniless and depressed (note which one of those are in quotations and which are not)—I thought the only sensible thing to do was to give the career up. Clearly, I was not a writer.

But a funny thing happened. I ended up writing anyway. Even though I couldn't make a vocation out of it in California, I recalibrated and just kept doing it. This time, not really to get anywhere—but simply because I enjoyed doing it.

They ask a somewhat dreary and crude question: 'if a tree falls in the middle of a forest, and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?'

Phrasing the question in this manner robs the tree of its dignity, I think.

I could ask myself, 'If I write in the middle of a forest, and nobody is there to read it, do I convey anything?'

The question suggests that the noise—the conveyance—is its own reward. "A fiefdom of its own."

So, if only bots are reading these posts, why do I bother to do it?

The fact of the matter is, I enjoy this type of writing too much to give it up.

The tree falls because it must. The noise is not necessarily its purpose for falling. And I discovered that it's not necessarily my purpose for writing, either. 

Besides, the bots have to read something. They're programmed to crawl every corner of the internet. I can only imagine how dark and nefarious some of those corners can be.

I'm not suggesting that this blog should serve as a bright or illuminating counterweight to those repugnant backchannels of the internet.

But at least it represents some honest musing from some guy, somewhere in the world, somewhere in time.

"It doesn't have to be good."

"It just has to exist."

I did end up finding my career.

My career is in an adjacent field to the one I had been pursuing in California, though I arrived to it by a circuitous route. 

I'm grateful for it—and I've found that I have done quite well by it, given the complete lack of education and formal training that I have. 

It turns out one can get quite far in through guile, perceptiveness and a commitment to acting the part.

Perhaps that, too, may make for a worthwhile future post.

I'm not saying I'm exceptional at what I do. But my colleagues also don't require me to be more exceptional than I am.

(Though they certainly don't require me to be any less exceptional than I am.)

I learned years ago that performance is directly dictated by rehearsal. You become what you practice.

You become by doing.

So, while I am a writer by trade, I had to adjust—and that meant practicing a specific kind of writing until, in time, I became passable at it.

"Fake it 'til you make it."

The work I do serves a function, and I operate within those parameters.

It pays the bills and gives structure to my life.

I'm sometimes amazed, and surprised, that I ended up here. It has its challenges, and sometimes I even enjoy it.

But it doesn't satisfy, intellectually.

Am I gazing into my navel, or discovering something about myself?

So what is this site? What am I doing? If nobody is reading it, am I helping or hindering myself?

"Self-improvement is like masturbation."

Let's take a look down memory lane and see what the past year of Z has unveiled:

• Milkman of the Ocean
• There are many reasons not to share—but despite this, there's still an innate compulsion to do so.
• Ramble Back
• A kind of 'crossword puzzle' challenge of non-sequiturs. I enjoyed the collaboration but I felt nagged by my own presumptuousness; perhaps this unsolicited response was invasive. Sorry about that. I often think I do better in short bursts, or conversationally, than in long-form, anyway, so this was a nice way to funnel ideas in a way that felt fun.
• Go Back to the Bears
• Aging with dignity is gone and may never return. What age will I be when I feel the urge to go pick a mortal fight with a bear?
• Rising from the Dead
• I wonder sometimes if others' memories of me might be better served if I had indeed been decapitated grotesquely like many had erroneously come to believe.
• Barbers Care: An Anthology of the Anecdotal
• The first of two entries charting my love/hate relationship with the barber's chair and getting a haircut.
• The Napping Club
• My first attempt at adapting a short film script of mine, inspired by a statistic I had heard. If you have to spend a third of your life asleep, why not do it in new and interesting places with people who care?
• Noses, Earth & Knowledge
• Our lives are buttressed by an unseen infrastructure of invisible information, and those who cry out that facts are assumed, not 'known', are decried as anti-science imbeciles. They may be wrong, but only a very few can actually articulate why.
• Pens & Revenge
• A sprawling investigation into the pen industrial complex of the modern era. This one got away from me.
• Nana's Pigeons: A Short Film
• The idyllic nature we envision humanity as having subjugated is actually invasive, apathetic and chaotic.
• NYC
• If things were different, maybe walking in to a place like this, on day one, would be a thrilling opportunity. It could also be the beginning of a long and wild mistake. Maybe those two things aren't mutually exclusive, and maybe it all would be alright (just right).
• The Adventures of a Civil-Ordered Public Marketing Agent: Pt. 1 - Approval from the Board & Building Clients in Craigslist
• The start of a series I had in mind following a well-meaning marketing agent navigating civic and social bureaucracy. Perhaps I'll endeavor a sequel in year two.
• Motivational Poster Collaboration with Artificial Intelligence
• AI: helpful enough to not be useless, not helpful enough to be of any meaningful utility.
• On Flies, Bees, the Mentally Ill & Deer
• Reality is messy, unchoreographed and raw. Perceptions of value, and our well-meaning intentions, should be carefully calibrated to reality and not to idealism.
• Cat Money
• Seriously, I still don't understand how this cat makes a living.
• Stalling
• Men's bathroom culture gravitates around protective and supportive silence. Privacy is the highest form of respect.
• Beneficial Suffering
• Who is benefiting from your ideology? Beware weaponized compassion.
• Mish Mash
• Some vignettes have been elaborated on for subsequent pieces. Others may yet still be harvested for lengthier essays. Others still will rightfully be left here, forgotten.
• Leaf After Death
• Who knows what great things your body will go on to do after you're done with it?
• "Can't" Opener
• Based on true events. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
• Schrödinger's Courtship
• It only takes seconds to miss an opportunity, but the consequences of missed opportunities can last much longer than that.
• Woken Up by Silent Bonobos / Putting Horny Toads to Sleep
• A memory I had of my father that I tried to write accurately and honestly for decades, but always fell short. A bit of a requiem piece for him. My mom deserves one, though that will be a tricky one, too.
• When You See a Good Move, Look for a Better One.
• Don't avoid things you love just because you're bad at them.
• Tickle Me Barber
• I return to the barber's chair and try my hardest not to laugh.
• Your New Digital Head
• This story idea came to me in a dream I had. I elaborated on it—and added the familial backstory—but other than that, it's as I dreamt it.
• Sometimes, Sudden Deel Like Betrayal
• A spiritual successor to this post.
• Lost in Translation is Dead. And We Have Killed It.
• Film appreciation and cultural critique. This one hung with me for a while after having seen (though refrained from watching) a YouTube video "spoiling" what Bob whispers in Charlotte's ear at the end of Lost in Translation. I'd like to do a similar one comparing Pee Wee to Forrest Gump.
• A Little More
• Yes, I'm fine. Thanks for asking.
• Flush
• Four unrelated memories about suffering and how vain it is to think we can combat it. But is there anything we can do?
• Humancracker Z
  
• This one was fun to write. And a good excuse to revisit Kundun.
• The Village Idiom
• Another fun lightning round of odds and ends I accrued, and which had nowhere else to go. As always, the Laughing Bed portion just doesn't work or fit anywhere. Should have been omitted.
• A Toot-in-Common
• I used to love A-B scene actor exercises in my days as a thespian, and tried to write one. I'd like to do more of these.
• The People
• Another adaptation of a script of mine. Individuality is overrated, but it doesn't matter because it's also inevitable.
• I, Meatball
• Investigating an early workplace memory and more exploration of the benefits of ego death.
• Accursed Be the White Nose Hair!
• This doesn't cater to my particular writing skills but I had fun, nonetheless.
• Ambivalence's End
• Amazing things happen every day and nobody cares because they're ordinary. 
• When Words Fail
• You can't say out loud even half the things you want, and it's better that way.
• Getting Burgers
• Another adaptation of some previous work. Could perhaps be cut into two or three separate pieces. Rituals, tribes and the weirdness of life.
• Rage Over a Lost Penny
• Inspired by Beethoven and this idea of "amiable anger" that I find so endearing. Looking at it now, I find myself smitten by some of the friendly frustration of Oliver Hardy performances. 
• Chicken Gristle Girl
• A true story from my first day of high school. I think about her every time I eat chicken off the bone.
• They're Just Dreams
• Remembering a dream I had that night, waking up to realize that I have this dream constantly.
• peep-peep
• Making some positive, slowly incremental changes in life and paying attention to subtle cues that they are for the better. As always, it comes down to attitude.
• The Neighbor's Tree
• Another adaptation of a short film script I had written. I always thought this might make a good music video. The idea came to me drinking coffee one morning and looking out at a little tree in my neighbor's yard, growing up above the top of my fence, and imagining.
• "Science is Broken," Says Scientists
• I harbor some resentment against academia. 

These entries cover the first year of Z, not including other pages available on this site.

So what does it all mean?

Despite the self-indulgent nature of this Z in retrospect post, I'll refrain from coming to any conclusions about the merit, utility or even quality of these writings, except to say that I've tried—as much as possible—to "write from the hip," without too much second-guessing, rewriting, editing or overcorrection.

As a result, there are mistakes, some entries are overlong, and some are downright tedious or poorly expressed. For that reason, it may be obvious why my most avid and voracious readers aren't human at all.

But after a year's worth of writing, I can admit I have enjoyed the process. 

I think I'll continue a little longer.

Yes, I can hear the sighs of relief from the Bots of Bengaluru. 

Where is this going?

I don't know. 

I'd like this blog to be a repository for my ideas that I can look back on in the future and mine for more polished or focused narrative writing.

Perhaps these fragments or slipshod posts are the foundation of something a bit more organized I'd like to write in the future. 

A screenplay? A novel? 

A word search activity book to help pass the time during overnight hospital stays?

"A horse! A horse! My blog for a horse!"

All I know is, it's not good to keep the audience waiting.

So, for all the bots from China, Singapore, India and beyond: stay tuned for Z: Year 2. 

I have to give you and your programmers something to do.