One (Fifty) And Done

With 149 consecutive days of blogging, I couldn't let go without one more post to hit 150 as I say farewell.  Since posting about ad revenue is what I suspect brought about the tragic end of Away from the Cubicle, it seems fitting that my final post will focus on that very same topic.  Why not finish things off with a traditional, woefully undersized graph to illustrate the meteoric rise and abrupt crash of my blogging fortune?

Nearly five months to the day since my first post, I'm hanging it up...at least for now.  Looking back at that first post from February 25th, I realize that I was blogging about ad revenue from day one.  No wonder the Google cops had their eyes on me...anyway, it's been a wild and crazy ride.  Look for my return on a new site sometime this fall.  Up yours, AdSense!

Suspended

July was supposed to be the month of my big payday--I hit the $100 ad revenue threshold last month, and I'd been anxiously awaiting my direct deposit.  But as of this morning, I still hadn't received a penny.  When I checked my email early this afternoon, I'd received an email from Google AdSense, and the contents left me absolutely shocked.

The subject line stated that my AdSense account had been disabled, and the most disturbing line from the message read:

We have detected invalid activity on your site and your account has been disabled. We're limited in the amount of information we can provide about your specific violation. We understand this can be frustrating for you, but we've taken these precautionary measures because intentional violators can use this information to circumvent our detection systems.

I checked the FAQs section, and my worst fears were confirmed: all the ad revenue I had accumulated over the past five months has been forfeited and "returned to the advertisers."  Worse yet, there's no way to reinstate my account.  Not only am I starting over with nothing, but I'm not allowed to post ads on any blog associated with my Google account, which includes Passionately Apathetic.

I still can't figure out what rule I'm accused of violating.  I didn't click on my own ads...except for the few instances when I had a genuine interest in the product, like the sperm shoes:

Google discourages people from making any references to ads or ad revenue in the actual site content, so I guess my downfall must have started with my constant references to earnings and all those charts and graphs I posted on a monthly basis.

Now what?  I'd like to say that I blog for the pure and simple joy of blogging, but the thought of collecting even a paltry income for my writing was an intoxicating prospect--I just can't go back to giving it away for free.  This lifetime ban from AdSense may very well mark the end of Away from the Cubicle.  Maybe the timing is perfect--I was about to take an extended break as I focus on school applications, and the only other incentive I had to forge ahead has disappeared.  When I emerge from the other side of the application process--if I make it out alive--look for yet another new blog under a different account, with the notable absence of any reference to ad revenue.

Like most major undertakings in life, what started out as a fun and promising endeavor ends in bitterness and defeat.  Apparently James isn't the only one who can bring great shame to the family.  Much like he was banned from Facebook for posting inappropriate photos, I'm now a Google AdSense outlaw for mysteriously and poorly defined reasons.

The Dark Night...and Day

Some impressive streaks are coming to an end.  On the positive side, my season-long winless drought on the tennis courts finally ended this evening. My streak of futility came to a halt at the ghetto tennis capital of Minneapolis, the Read Sweatt Tennis Center..."Home of Inner City Tennis".

The name Sweatt on the sign outside isn't just a name, it's a strong indicator of the conditions inside the building.  The neighborhood doesn't seem terribly dangerous, but I do know that inner city tennis doesn't involve air conditioning.  My shirt was instantly soaked with "sweatt" before I'd even pulled my racquet out of my bag.  Luckily I love the hot weather, and we pulled off a 7-5, 6-3 win, and our team won the match-up 2-1.  The bad news is that we're already statistically eliminated from qualifying for sectionals, but a win's a win, and that hadn't happened in a long time.

That was the bad streak that ended today.  Unfortunately, I fear a good streak is also in jeopardy.  I'm approaching 150 consecutive days of blog posts, but I may have to hang up the keyboard and focus all of my writing effort on grad school essays.  With today's half-day Friday at work, I decided I'd sit down and officially start writing my first essay.  I would tackle the "easy" one that asks about career goals.  The problem is, I quickly learned that there's no such thing as an easy essay...odd that that the word easy is embedded in the word essay, huh?

Seven hundred words about myself should, in theory, be a walk in the park.  I figured I'd have a solid draft done between noon and the tennis match in the early evening.  My first rule of writing is that it's much, much easier to edit than it is to create something from scratch.  So I always just start typing crap on a blank screen and go back later to polish the big, steaming mess I'm left with.  For whatever reason, I couldn't even get the crap to come out this afternoon.  I have a bad case of mental constipation and can't seem to find the writer's laxatives anywhere. 

For the life of me, I couldn't find the right balance between concise writing and too little detail to make any relevant points.  If things even out over time like I claimed a few days ago, I wonder if tennis success breeds writing failure.  Because I would have gladly traded a win for a decent draft of an essay today.  I typed, deleted, re-typed, and re-deleted thousands of words today, but I can only describe what I'm left with via a visual metaphor:

Good thing I only have about fifteen of these things to write...and today's was the "easy" one...and the draft isn't even finished.  So it looks like blog posts are going to be fewer and much farther between until mid-October.  Depending how bad things get, I may start a new blog-free streak that rivals what I've accomplished thus far.  I'm guessing that won't help the ad revenue.  Enjoy this while you can, because the dream is almost over...

At Long Last, The Century Mark!

As of midnight tonight, my fourth full month of daily blogging will be in the books.  I'm thrilled to report that I've achieved my lifelong goal--or at least my goal of the past few months--by blowing past my $100 ad revenue earnings goal!  At the end of last month, I sat on the doorstep of greatness, with more than $75 in unpaid earnings.

Once again, I went the whole month without checking to see how the blog earnings were adding up.  I had my concerns, what with my having to publish two weeks worth of vacation-shortened blog posts via the Blogger app in June.  But apparently having something different and mildly entertaining to write about pays off, because June was the best month yet, with over $30 in ad revenue.  Not to get all mathematical, but that's more than $1 a day.  At this rate, my blog is a perfect candidate to help the Christian Children's Fund...as that Santa-looking guy in the commercial says, "For a dollar a day, you can feed a family of thirty-six for a full year in Ethiopia."  At last I think that's how it goes.

At $1 of ad revenue a day, I've officially made the big-time.  Less successful blogs could only fund the 14¢ a day that it takes to prevent violent kitten biting in third-world countries:

But I digress...anyway, here's the traditional, woefully undersized monthly revenue chart.  Maybe one of these months I'll figure out how to get this thing to show up in a normal size.  But as you can barely see, June was the best month ever, though Passionately Apathetic posted its second consecutive shutout, a fact that I'm hardly apathetic about.

Despite the shutout, June was still an overwhelmingly positive month.  Between the two blogs, I'm well over the $100 threshold...this blog alone is knocking on the door of the century mark, but with a little help from the struggling Passionately Apathetic, I'm sitting at $108.

The implications of this milestone are huge.  Once June revenue finalizes, Google will be depositing $108 into my bank account, which means I'll be a professional writer!  Seems like the perfect time to quit my job and focus on this blossoming new career...this modest payday will feel much more gratifying that any paycheck I've received for my "efforts" at the office over the years.

Part of me wishes that I hadn't set up direct deposit on my AdSense account, because receiving a paper check in the mail would be a sweet, sweet moment--a line on the bank statement just isn't quite the same.  But then again, I'm sure I'd end up framing that check and would never actually deposit it, so at least this way I can enjoy the cash.  I've been asked what I'll do with this nice little bonus.  The Christian Children's Fund will just have to wait--I can't think of anything more exhilarating than depositing that money directly into a savings account and watching it grow at a hefty 0.000005% interest rate.  By the time I'm ninety years old, I'm going to be sitting on a $112 nest egg. 

P.S.: I'm still feeling extremely thankful about the story that inspired yesterday's blog post.  It's rare that a news headline includes both Wal-Mart shoppers and bathroom hijinx, two of my favorite topics.  I don't consider myself a religious person, but it's like Jebus himself super-glued that Wal-Mart toilet seat just for me.

One Hundred!

Today marks the official 100th anniversary of this blog!  Not only has this blog merely existed for one hundred days, it also includes one hundred posts!  Believe it or not, I've managed to post something every single day since starting this mess on February 25th.  I'm more shocked than anyone, but there are clearly some well-known streak-holders who are pretty impressed with my efforts:

 
In honor of this blog's 100th anniversary, I tried to contact Willard Scott at The Today Show to see if Away From the Cubicle could appear on that segment where he wishes all those centenarians a happy birthday.

I don't think 'ol Willy even got my message.  All I received in response was an angry letter from an NBC intern pointing out two big reasons why this blog would not be making an appearance on their program: (1) it's only 100 days old, not 100 years old, and (2) it's a blog, not a person.  At least they were kind enough not to mention anything about the quality of the writing.

As for the age of this still-young blog, I kindly reminded the folks at NBC that if the blog were 100 years old, the quality of its posts would be significantly diminished, if it's possible to even imagine such a scenario.  And that age, this blog's author would be pushing 130 years old, and the daily posts would focus on riveting topics like rheumatoid arthritis and fiber-induced regularity.  Plus I'd be busy making the Guinness Book world tour as the oldest blogger in the history of the world.  Despite my compelling arguments, I plead my case to no avail.

Since NBC wouldn't give this blog the attention is so clearly deserves, I decided to honor it myself.  Who needs a national TV audience when I can reach six people by writing up a celebration-themed post and publishing it here?  In my opinion, Willard Scott's always been a little creepy anyway...

Better looking than every one of Willard's honorees.

Now the obvious question is: "how long will the streak continue?"  I have no idea, but I'm bound to have to take a day off in the near future.  As much as I'd like it to end on my terms and take that metaphorical seat on the bench at a time of my choosing, I fear that work could force me to end of this historic and memorable run.

Only four and a half work days stand between me and the end of Spring Plan.  I can see the light at the end of the re-plan tunnel, but before I emerge at the other side and find myself engulfed in the blinding brightness of freedom, I have a financial minefield to navigate.  I already survived last week's extremely annoying, not-on-the-official-calendar "Prelim Re-Plan."  If the company's going to waste thousands of man hours rebuilding a financial plan, why not waste a few more hours and provide a "preview" one week early with bad information?

I regret to report that work already invaded my precious free time this weekend.  I found myself logged into the work laptop last night between the hours of 11PM and 1AM, a prime block of time typically reserved for blogging.  In that state of zombie-like fatigue that sets in late at night, I'm able to churn out some of my best work.  And again this afternoon, I was logged back in to the work laptop, trying to get some of the pain out of the way before the week gets underway.

Unfortunately, all my effort will likely go to waste, since the final and critical pieces of the financial puzzle won't be available until Tuesday night, and the finished product is due before noon on Wednesday.  I'll try to focus on the bright side: since the plan will be wildly inaccurate anyway, we might as well cram the pain into a period of less than twenty-four hours instead of spending days on it.  I'll just have to bring a sleeping bag and a change of clothes with me to the office on Tuesday.

The end is so close, yet so far away.  It's the final countdown....maybe that should be the official soundtrack for the week:




Happy 100th to Away From The Cubicle!

Is The Trend My Friend?

Another month comes to a close, and that means it's time for the traditional monthly ad revenue update.  Last month, I boldly predicted that ad revenue would continue to double every month as it did from March to April.  I kept myself in suspense all month, resisting the urge to occasionally glace at the Blogger Earnings report.  This morning was the big reveal...at the end of May, was the trend still my friend?

Sadly, the answer was a resounding "no."  Today marks the close of three months of non-stop, adventure-filled blogging.  If Away From The Cubicle were a publicly traded company, I would be filing my 10-Q report at the end of my first quarter of operations. (Is it obvious that work is at the forefront of my mind?)  Unfortunately, at this point my stock would also be suffering a Facebook-style downward spiral, as revenue growth fell off sharply in May.

Before getting into the details, I'm going to focus on the good news.  Through April, I'm more than half way to my goal:

That's almost $53 in the bank (well, Google's bank for now), not including revenue from May.  Like I said, that's the good news...less impressive is the lack of explosive growth that I predicted last month.  Once again, let's go to the classic woefully undersized chart:

Unless you click on the graph, that's incredibly difficult to read.  But you don't need hawk-like vision to see that the green bar in May is barely taller than the green bar in April.  Away From The Cubicle pulled in around $24 for the month. Not bad, but that revenue plateau would have even the most optimistic analysts downgrading my stock from "Strong Buy" to "Hold."  The really tragic news is the complete lack of a blue bar for Passionately Apathetic.  For the first month in its two year history, Passionately Apathetic got shut out like John Tesh at the Grammy's.

I refuse to be deterred, however, and will continue to focus on the good news.  Once May's revenue shows up in the unpaid earnings total, I'll be more than 75% of the way to my $100 milestone:

With three months behind me, it's looking like the earnings trajectory is a little more tortoise than hare...a little more Microsoft than Apple...a little more Malibu than Porsche. 

This little setback threatens to push back my early retirement by decades...but in the short term, I have a new goal: I'm within striking distance of the $100 payout mark, so I'd like to ride this plateau all June long and report back at the end of next month that I'm a professional writer. Then I can take my first paycheck and treat myself to a replacement hubcap, making the Malibu a little more Porsche-like.  From there, I'm confident that things will turn around nicely, and ad revenue will continue it's meteoric rise.  Stay tuned!

Halfway Heroic

I can't believe the end of April is already here. Maybe it's hard to believe because the weather has been spectacularly disappointing, especially after the unseasonably warm May-arch weather last month.  That's not to say that April hasn't had it's share of nice days...it's just that without fail, the temperature immediately plummets, clouds roll in, and rain starts to fall on Friday night and continues through Sunday night.

Then Monday morning hits, the sun returns, and the temperature leaps back into comfortable territory.  Seriously, this happened every single weekend, all April long!  It's like the weather gods were mocking my every step two and from work.  I think I spent a grand total of thirty-five minutes outside all month, and that's the cumulative total from walking between the car into various buildings.

But enough about the sad, depressing weather.  The final day of the month means that it's my last chance to post my monthly ad revenue update, a long-standing tradition here at Away from the Cubicle.  And by long-standing tradition, I mean second post on the topic...but all traditions have to start somewhere.

I hadn't checked my AdSense account for quite a few weeks--Google's overhaul of the Blogger interface made it temporarily difficult to locate the Earnings button, but I finally found it and did some investigating this morning.  I was beyond pleasantly surprised by the results--Blogger business is booming!  First of all, with March's money in the bank, I'm up to $26.82 in revenue, not including anything from April:

And, like I said, April has been a very good month.  At this risk of making this feel a little too much like work and not enough like a blog titled Away from the Cubicle, let's go to the woefully undersized graphs:

I nearly doubled my ad revenue in April, with over $25 for the month!  And the lifetime earnings chart is looking pretty darn good, too:

With more than $50 in the bank as April comes to a close, I'm officially more than half way to my $100 AdSense-minimum cash-out goal. And, as you may recall, when I break through that illustrious $100 barrier and receive my first Blogger payment, I wiill officially proclaim myself a professional writer. Given powerful trend I'm working with, I'll be wealthy and retired by the end of next year.

Ad revenue is more than doubling every month, and with two months worth of data supporting this explosive exponential trend, I see no reason why that won't continue indefinitely.  Who knew it could be this easy?!  With all the free time I'll have in retirement without that pesky little thing known as "employment," the quality of this blog will surely skyrocket along with my earnings, creating an unstoppable, virtuous cycle.

Well, That Was Easy!

Today officially marks the one month anniversary of the founding of this blog. I set out with two primary goals: frequent, lower quality posts, and a race against myself and Passionately Apathetic to see how quickly I could rack up $2.37 in ad revenue. So far, the results have been overwhelmingly positive on both fronts.

With this post, I've made it one full month writing one blog post per day. That's far better than I'd hoped--my goal was to write at least a few times each week, and I've blown that away. Don't expect it to continue, though...while the streak is still intact, I don't see how I can possibly keep up that torrid pace over the long run, particularly with a grueling, busy month of April approaching at work. But several posts per week still seems like a reasonable goal.

And, as promised, my daily posts are of lower quality than those featured on Passionately Apathetic; I've been told they're riddled with typos, but I guess that's to be expected with fast typing and minimal editing. (But feel free to point out the mistakes so I can fix them...)

On the ad revenue front, the first month was shocking--my race to $2.37 turned into a complete joke.  In the first three days of existence, Away from the Cubicle earned $6.77 in revenue. I have no idea how that happened, since even fewer people know about this blog than know about Passionately Apathetic, but I try not to question good news.  The only bad part, however, was that the ad revenue came in a few small bursts, with big fat zeroes on most days.  At this point, I'd feel better with a slow, steady stream than a few bursts of clicking.

As I continued analyzing at my AdSense results, I realized that I don't go down without a fight, especially in a battle against myself.  Since I'd last checked, Passionately Apathetic had had a great month of December, more than doubling its previous ad revenues to date.  Perhaps my holiday-themed, anti-gift giving post really resonated with my small group of followers.

AdSense doesn't release "official" ad earnings until the month is over, but March is looking like another solid month for Away from the Cubicle, with $5.55 in ad revenue as of the writing of this post.  The race to $2.37 turned out to be about as meaningful as my blogging competition with James, but at least I can continue to pit my two blogs against one another for leadership in all-time ad earnings.  Based on the lifetime totals, it's a pretty tight race...

I just might turn this race into a monthly check-in blog post, much like this one. I must say, logging into my AdSense account isn't nearly as depressing these days.  This doesn't include any of the March ad revenue, but the total is moving slowly away from the "embarrassing" zone and into that much sought after "less pathetic" range.

I guess I need to establish a new goal, and the logical one is to reach the $100 account balance level so I can cash out my earnings, lose my amateur status, and start calling myself a professional writer.  Women will want me; men will want to be me--writer sits near the top of the list of sexiest professions, right there with firefighter, drummer, doctor, guitar player, and financial analyst.  I think this warrants the use of a fundraising thermometer:

Unlike the Malibu repair thermometer, I'll be thrilled to see this one climb toward the top. The scale's a lot smaller, but watching a little money trickle into my pocket is far better than seeing huge chunks jump ship for the local repair shop.  With my current earnings, I'm wealthy enough to afford two of those delicious sandwiches I mentioned in my inaugural blog post, and it didn't even take several years like I'd predicted!

The Art of Losing

I couldn't believe the subject line when the email showed up in my work inbox last Tuesday: "Creative Writing Contest!"  For quite some time, I've been casually searching for writing competitions--preferably those offering prize money.  I've had no such luck, though, as I have yet to find a single contest that's looking for the kind of random, pointless fare that I've been serving up on a regular basis on this blog (I guess that also helps explain the skimpy ad revenue thus far).  That's why I was so surprised when an incredible opportunity found me--and at work, of all places!

A few weeks ago, a coworker hobbled into the office on crutches, sporting a pair of walking casts on his first day back from a vacation in the Dominican Republic.  Not surprisingly, everyone asked him what had happened, but all he would offer were vague, dismissive responses about how he had fractured both heels.  He seemed extremely reluctant to provide any details about his injuries, avoiding questions to the point that the meeting became downright awkward.

I've known the guy (we'll call him "Chris") for years--we actually had some classes together in college before we ended up working together, and I'd seen him act this way once before.  In 2009, he and I drove down to Iowa State for a work recruiting event that included a golf outing.  It had been raining all morning, and course was still wet when we started golfing in the afternoon.

I was paired with a recruiter from another company, Chris was paired with an ISU professor, and Chris and I each got to drive a golf cart.  On a fairly steep downhill slope, Chris tried to turn to the right, lost control of the cart, and it rolled onto its side, spilling clubs, golf balls, tees--and its passengers--everywhere.  No one was seriously injured, but the professor who'd been riding shotgun had a bad cut on his hand and needed to see a doctor.

After we flipped the cart upright, Chris drove the injured professor back to the clubhouse, where he then drove himself to the emergency room for some stitches.  Needless to say, our group of four (now a group of three) was the last to finish golfing that day, and walking into the clubhouse at the end of the round was a mighty awkward experience.  Clearly, news of the incident had spread quickly, and Chris and I found a seat in the corner while everyone in the room turned, stared, and whispered as we sat down.  Chris had driven us down to Ames in his car that morning, but he let me drive on the way back to Minneapolis.

When we returned to work the next day, Chris tried to swear me to secrecy about the cart-rolling incident.  He was clearly embarrassed about what had happened, even though the crash was an honest mistake (and a mistake that I had almost made earlier that same day with my cart).  When a few people on the ISU recruiting team eventually found out, Chris wouldn't divulge any details and was constantly trying to change the subject, not unlike his response to his Dominican injuries--a sign that there was an interesting story behind his walking casts.

Here's where the writing contest comes in: after hearing how evasive Chris acted when asked about his fractured heels, the finance director issued a challenge to our group: since Chris wouldn't tell anyone what really happened, we'd have a creative writing contest and fill in the missing facts ourselves, with the top entries to be revealed at yesterday's staff meeting and a prize going to the author of the winning selection.

My storyline immediately took shape: Chris fractured his heels in the golf cart accident at Iowa State back in 2009.  He'd spent the last few years hiding his injuries, too embarrassed to tell anyone that he'd been hurt.  I would spend the majority of my story recapping the details of the cart crash, then tack on some ridiculous ending, explaining how Chris had re-aggravated the injury doing something boring and mundane in the Dominican Republic. I couldn't lose--even if I somehow didn't win the contest, I'd still get to humiliate Chris in front of thirty people with a story that I knew he never wanted to see go public.

In the office last Friday,  I spent most of the morning crafting my entry for the contest.  I even cobbled together some delightfully amateur, photo-shopped images of crashed golf carts with Chris's head-shot from the company directory strategically inserted in the foreground.  Going into the staff meeting yesterday afternoon, I couldn't imagine a scenario where I wouldn't bringing home the prize...until I heard the rules for the contest.

Ten people had submitted entries for the competition, and they had narrowed the pack down to three finalists.  Normally I would like those odds, except that the selection panel consisted of just one person: Chris himself.  Sure enough, I was shut out.  The only "recognition" my story received--if you can even call it that--was a PowerPoint slide that included the titles of the ten entries, sans authors.  To add insult to injury, they'd even changed the title of my story!

The three semi-finalist submissions were read aloud at the staff meeting, and I was utterly disappointed with the quality.  A winner was selected by vote, and it was all I could do to fight back the vomit trying to creep up my throat. My story had a certain universal appeal that would have been voted the champion by any objective panel; the winner of this contest had written a pathetic story loaded with lame, politically correct office- and finance-based humor that only the thirty finance people in the room would find amusing.

I saw one last shot at redemption when the finance director announced that all of the submissions would be distributed via email later in the day.  Even if Chris had snubbed my entry, my story would go public, and the staff meeting audience would realize that they'd been deprived of the opportunity to vote for the real winner.

But disappointment struck again.  What that original email gaveth in hope, a second email tooketh away.  The finance director sent out a message saying that he was scrapping the plan to send out the stories, showing Chris some mercy for being a good sport about the whole situation.

And so a perfectly good story went untold, and I'm now officially 0-for-1 in writing competitions.  But didn't Dr. Seuss get shot down like seventy times before making it big?  My golf court story was short on rhymes, but it was infinitely more entertaining than anything Doc Seuss ever penned. Note to self: in the next contest, don't try to publicly humiliate the person judging your entry...

A Classic Matchup: Quality vs. Quantity

May 29, 2009 marked the beginning of an impressive streak that lives on to this day.  That Friday, I decided that I would make an effort to do a little writing--at least something--every single day.  It wasn't much, just a short paragraph or two about what I had done each day.  Sadly, that daily writing session typically amounted to a pretty uninteresting summary of the day's events, what with the painfully repetitive work routine.

But as of today, that Word document has turned into 417 pages and 283,000 words of single-spaced, action-packed awesomeness.  I'm waiting for a phone call from Cal Ripken Jr. to commend me on my impressive writing streak.  And believe me, it's not easy writing every single day, especially on the days when I'm traveling or just really, really busy.

And, over the course of those two-plus years, my writing efforts have overwhelmed Microsoft Word's ability to proofread my work.  Few people realize that around the time you hit the 300 page mark in a Word document, the program loses its ability to highlight misspelled words with the little red underline.  I have no doubt that with my hurried typing and lack of editing, the last hundred pages are littered with typos.  But that's beside the point...

Why did I bother starting this odd writing habit?  I figured that years later, it would be interesting to look back and see what I was doing and thinking every day--and I'm already surprised at how much I'd forgotten when I glace back at stuff that happened even a year or two ago. Plus, I was always frustrated when I'd remember some random event from the past few years, then struggle to recall the specifics of exactly when it happened or who was there. It's like hearing a familiar song and having the artist's name on the tip of your tongue, just out of your memory's reach. I decided the best way to win that battle would be to write down the highlights every day...and like I said, it would be cool to look back on that in three, five, twenty, thirty years, whenever.

And the next obvious question is...why start another blog?  Passionately Apathetic will continue in all it's glory, but I want to try something different at the same time.  Sometime last year (I could look up the specific day if I really want to), I read a magazine article about the top professional bloggers, and it mentioned that the real money makers publish five or six posts new posts before noon every day, which keeps office workers coming back day after day to check out the new posts during their lunch hour at work.

It crossed my mind that my monthly posts on Passionately Apathetic might be a bit too infrequent to keep the traffic flowing in my direction.  The monthly spike of three or four hits just isn't driving the ad revenue I'd hoped, as evidenced by the $2.37 I've generated in the past two years.  On a per-hour basis, I'm sitting so far below minimum wage that I seriously considered suing myself.  But before I filed the paperwork, I decided that I'd start a second blog.  It seems like just about every day, I encounter a random event or image that's worthy of a quick post, but perhaps not deserving of a full Passionately Apathetic-style write-up.

That's where this blog comes in--expect a big step up in frequency of posting, and a sharp drop-off in the length and quality of blog posts.  (Don't get too worried, I'm sure the decline in quality will be virtual invisible to the average reader.)  As always, posts will cover everything and anything...from time to time, a post might cover nothing more than the answer to a question that nobody asked nor cares to hear the answer to: what did you do today?

And I've finally found a formidable competitor to challenge my writing: myself!  Fans of Passionately Apathetic might recall that that the blog began as a blogging competition with James, my attempt to prove that quality writing easily trumps the excitement of life on another continent.  If you've bothered to check out his blog over the past year and half, you'll realize that I've won that competition hands down.  I'm on to bigger and better things: seeing if I can push this blog's ad revenue past the $2.37 barrier in less than twenty months.

Along with the new blog, I want to experiment with layouts, gadgets, widgets, and everything the blogging world has to offer.  Expect changes to colors, fonts, layouts, and just about everything as I fumble my way through the online world of amateur publishing.  My first addition is the Daily Mile widget in the upper right corner of the screen, a widget that lets me track workouts and shamelessly publish them on the blog.  Though I haven't spent much time on the site yet, it seems pretty cool so far, kind of a Facebook for fitness.  Best of all, it lacks all the annoying baby photos and posts that I can't seem to avoid on Facebook.

The self-challenge and the race to $2.37 is on.  Which style of blog will prove most successful--quality or quantity?  It's a classic rivalry, more heated and contentious than the epic Yankees/Red Sox battles over the decades.  Prepare for the excitement; it'll be like watching two turtles in a slow, painful race for ad revenue.  With a little luck and lots of ad clicking, I'll have earned myself a free sandwich over the course of a few short years.  So check back often...I'm already getting hungry.