What kind of blogger are you?

I've had some new readers on my blog just lately. All are welcome, please make yourselves comfortable and don't be afraid to comment or check the little feedback boxes at the bottom of each posting. I moderate, but I only remove spam and trolls. Contrary opinions with supporting reasoning are more than welcome! I admit to some surprise that while my most recent post got lots of readers, there are no comments. Maybe nobody actually read down the wall o'text to get to the comment form.

There are bloggers that concentrate on one topic. There are mommy/daddy bloggers, food bloggers, fitness bloggers, gadget bloggers, movie bloggers, book bloggers, well, you get the idea. They wanted to know what slot I fit into.

I'm sorry (no I'm not!) but I refuse to limit myself like that. Except for the first, since I'm not a parent, I've touched on all of those, some more than others. My blog started as a fitness blog. Between you and me the first several weeks, and even mostly the first few months are pretty dull. The first one that isn't dull happened about a month into all this. You can find out about the attack of the yogurt container here. Don't be drinking anything.

Even though all the advice says to stick to one topic, pump your readership, and monetize your blog, I won't do that. I write what I want to write, on a wide variety of topics. My readers can read or not as they please. I'm almost certain some of them look at the title and say "He's on about THAT again? Don't need to go there." But then they come back for a Curtis photo, or something else they like. (Everybody likes photos of Curtis or Celina. Scroll down.)

I've come to think of myself as an essayist rather than a blogger. Yes, there is often fitness stuff that gets mentioned, or the current status of my various projects. But more and more I have an opinion on a topic, and I use the blog to share it. It could be anything from indecision in a doorway to macro political economics.

I don't try to be funny, exactly, but I do try to be witty, and there's a big difference between them. If I can make a reader smile at how I've presented an idea, that's a win for me. Spraying coffee through the nose all over the computer is a bonus. What you will get is almost always reasonably well written and organized. Mostly blog posts get done to second draft status. I could certainly clean up almost all of them, but there are time limits.

I have induced potentially window shattering screams as one particular reader floundered around with eyes closed trying to find the tiny little x to close the photo window. She knows who she is, and I did warn people first. If you want to see what induced the internal scream, you'll have to search for it yourself using "graphic followup" as the search term in the little box at the top of the page.

The first real essay, though I thought of it as a rant at the time, was about the Olympics. It just boiled out of me and needed very little rewriting. I've just read it again now, and I'm still pretty pleased with it. You can read it here.

Since then there have been a variety of rants on a variety of subjects. People seem to like them, at least so far. The impact on my blood pressure is wonderful! But a buddy of mine was looking over my blog because he was about to start one, and he pointed out that my labels are not as well chosen as they could be. I have to agree.

When I started I didn't include many photos, so a label for photos was useful. Except now it says there are 455 posts with photos, and I know I've missed some. "But photos of what?" my buddy asked. Good question. I can't tell, and neither can you.

I was thinking of going through all 1800+ posts and redoing the labels, after creating a criteria for them. Would that make any difference? Do you decide what to read based on the labels (right up there below the title)? Umm, have you even noticed the labels? Maybe I don't want to know the answer there.

Some bloggers post on a regular schedule. I'm not that organized. Over the life of the blog new posts arrive every day and a half. Sometimes that means every day for a month or two, other times it means several days between. It all depends on life, the universe, and everything.

If you don't want to miss a post there's a couple ways to keep track. You can follow me on Twitter, right now that's in my blog roll just under the labels. You can follow by email, that's down near the bottom of the blog roll. Just above that there's the Member's thing, but I don't know if that still works. You can subscribe in a reader, though to be honest I don't know if that's working. Twitter is the best bet. I'm not in Blog Loving, or Feedly or any of the others.

Swam a clunky swim on Friday. No water feel at all. Hip and core feeling cranky again. For complicated scheduling reasons (we are too cheap to buy a second car) I walked from the pool to my office. It took 12 minutes. I'm reasonably sure that's faster than driving. I'll have to time it next time to be sure.

Swam a nice swim on Sunday, lots of technique work and drills. Stretching at home after produced a very nice hip thunk again.

I am having no luck working on my books. I'm stuck on something at the moment, but the bigger problem is the cats. For some reason I'm the lap of choice lately. If I'm sitting, they want my lap. If I try to write, this is what I get. Does anyone have any doubt what Curtis is thinking?

So (as the saying goes), that's enough of me talking about myself. What do you think of me? (badumdah!)

What kind of a blogger are you?