Let me tell you about blogs for a bit...

I blog because I can tell you things here that I won't tell you face to face. Why? Because here, you are my imaginary and trusted listener - who clings to every word. Well, not really. I've checked out my readership and don't worry about even breaking into the top ranks.

Found and (old in Internet time) piece by Seth Godin, called "Who's There?". It was on a site I mirrored a couple years ago and have been digesting it ever since.

The reason I won't break into the top ranks is because I don't bother to be four out of the five things Godin covers:

1. Candor
2. Urgency
3. Timeliness
4. Pithiness
5. Controversy

Of these, I only keep candor at a dull roar around here. Probably a bit too blunt at times, but that's the deal. Otherwise, I couldn't be bothered.

That list has you surfing the leading edge of the "group consciousness" wave.

But frankly, I'll never get near that - because I don't go where the majority do. In fact, I'll usually go the opposite, just on principle.

There is no urgency to what I blog, and most of what I cover - philosophic core principles - are timeless.

I sometimes rattle on at length - pithiness be damned if it gets in the way of a good stream-of-consciousness rant. Because I'm working on sorting something out - and what I write is probably going to be part of a book one day.

As to controversy - just hang it up at the door when you come in. I work at helping people get the kinks and problems out of their lives, not get more in. Read my rants about the MSM and how you should turn off the TV and spend some time listening to yourself and your own dreams.

So I've simply quit worrying about how the bulk of humanity care about my particular posts. Those who want to be truly rich in life, who want to succeed, who improve the world around them with every action they take - those are the impossible few to find and are the potential readers to my blog(s).

Oh, when I first started this, I posited forth on politics and various views. And got readers and flamers and whatnot. But this didn't bring me any wealth or higher ranking on Technorati. But I did find that the flaming posts were irritating (and obnoxiously silly). And if politics ever made a tinker's damn worth of importance in the scheme of things, I'd start blogging about it again.

But Politics doesn't write books which survive and are reprinted hundreds of years later. Politics doesn't get up in the morning with me and help me feed and check on my cows and crops and pastures. I don't see one of these guys getting out on that cold, wet spring day when I have to get the fences fixed before I put the cows back in for the summer...

I do see them taking out money before I can spend it, so they can - on some program that I'll never get any benefit from. I don't mind gasoline taxes which go for road improvement. And the little spent on the VA has helped me after I had left the military and had cancer and, later, broke an ankle.

Otherwise, I get more from local stores where I can talk to the manager and get real products that I need. And seed companies owned and run locally whose owners also shovel seed into 50lb bushel sacks for me when I need a special order. And who can tell me how to farm cheaper and more sustainably.

Maybe you don't get all this. Maybe you live in big cities where it pays to donate to some politicians campaign so he/she can make sure the garbage collector's union stays on the job. But when I try to follow the asinine antics these people are up to in their career jobs nearly a thousan miles away - it's hilarious when it's not sad.

My advice - move the nation's capital out to the middle of Oklahoma or Nebraska or North Dakota. Then maybe they'd make more sense as they had to struggle through real weather in the long distances between towns which have more letters in their names than citizens within those city limits. And where ranchers would drop everything to get them going again if they ever broke down out there.

But enought. I blog those things which are important to me and to you - these are the things which can bring us any amount of wealth, health, personal power, and true happiness - if we will only apply them.

These things I blog are timeless. Sure, I've been spending a lot of time lately on all these marketing nuts and bolts and machinations which drive our Internet economy. That's all the necessary evils to getting books published which contain all these "secrets" which have been lost over the ages. Of course, they are all based on common sense - which again apparently depends on your connection with Nature - but I'm only interested in common sense which has still proved true from a century ago. That's real philosophy - love of truth, or appreciation for things that work.

And you, lucky rare reader, are the chief beneficiary.

For my use, I've set this blog up with gmail to send me a copy for research purposes later. I can search all my posts years later and find where I've already covered something and done that research. Because I hope to leave a crumb trail for others to follow - or a string through this labyrinth we all walk through.

The strings I follow were laid down even centuries ago.