Friday Flapdoodle

I’d just like to say ‘thank you’ to everyone who visited The Outspoken Omphaloskeptic yesterday. I’m not sure how or why it happened, but yesterday the site received the most traffic of any day since its navel-gazing inception. There were over 30% more visitors than on the previous busiest day. Less than ten of yesterdays hits were generated by links from other sites or search engine results. That means most of you visitors have chosen to land on this site.  For those of you who keep coming back, I’ll try to make sure that doing so is worth your while.

On a somewhat related note, I’ve noticed two tendencies in myself since I started posting to this blog. The first is something that I’m sure is very common: I tend to read, watch, look at or otherwise experience things and part of my brain is saying “Hey, I could post about that.” Though relatively frequent this new tendency to consider the possibility of turning everyday experiences into omphaloskeptic fodder doesn’t amount to a full-blown obsession on my part. Instead it simply provides an additional filter for my thinking, it gives me another reason to pause and reflect on things. That’s got to be a good thing, right? At any rate, I’m not too bothered by the possibility that The Outspoken Omphaloskeptic has subjective or introspectively self-indulgent tendencies.  This blog was, as the title might suggest, conceived with precisely those tendencies in mind. Yes, I post with the hope that I might strike a chord amongst visitors, but I’m not trying to claim my experience of life or my views are universal.  That would just be boring.  Besides, if I become too introverted in my postings visitor numbers will quickly dwindle to zero and I will be, essentially, sending myself e-mail.  I can do that without a website.

The second tendency I’ve noticed is that I have a major inability to proofread and edit when I’m writing for the Omphaloskeptic.  Normally, these are things I’m pretty good at and I can’t figure out what my problem is when it comes to writing this blog.  A few people have suggested that it has something to do with trying to edit on screen, but that’s how I do all my editing.  Maybe its just sheer excitement and an accompanying eagerness to get my posts published that combine to result in the slipping of my standards.  I’m not sure.

I’ve had to stop revisiting postings after I’ve published them because I’m filled with self-disgust and shame at some of the obvious mistakes that I find, mistakes I don’t make elsewhere.  It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I proofread a posting or even if I sit on it over night and read it again immediately before publishing, some evil demon in me takes over and indulges his desire to make me look like a fool with only a rudimentary knowledge of spelling, grammar, syntax and diction. This wouldn’t matter so much if I didn’t refuse to edit the posts once they’ve been up for more than a few minutes.  Doing so just strikes me as dishonest for some reason; I’d rather live with mistakes that make me literally cringe.  I think the best course of action may be for me to avoid revisiting items once I’ve posted them.  Does anyone else have this problem? Do you have any tips for overcoming it?  Is this some sort of karmic payback for all the ink I’ve spilled correcting the writings of others?

This is the longest posting I’ve done yet for a Friday and I feel its appropriately inconsequential even if it isn’t light-hearted.  My brain doesn’t want to cooperate and, as it is Friday, I’m going to give in to its demands and go lay on the floor with my dogs until my wife and mother-in-law return with supplies for our dinner.

Thanks again to all of you who have been regular visitors to the site.  The fact that some of you choose to read some the flapdoodle I spill is bemusing and vaguely edifying.  As ever, comments are welcome and feel free to send the Omphaloskeptic’s URL along to anyone who might be interested.   You could even let me know how many mistakes you can find in this posting if you like.