Like Me? Pay Me.

The internet is no help.

I feel like I am not stretching my mind capacity (especially with the desk that I am on this week) enough so I try to blog fairly regularly. The problem is nothing terribly exciting is going on and nobody has pissed me off in a long enough lasting fashion so, really, I am sort of blocked up. Creatively speaking. Normally I would just sit here and stare at the blank page before me and try to think of something, but this morning, tapped out, I decided to turn to the internet.

I googled "Blog ideas". Here's the problem. Blogging anymore (like anything else, I guess) is apparently all about making money. Don't get me wrong, I like money. I'd like to have more of it (movie reference? Anybody?). But I don't know if I could commit to the mainstream ideal for this (or any) blog and make it try to generate cash on a regular basis. I'm just not that interesting. Or good. I have Google Ads on this thing but the last time I checked (and I don't even remember HOW to check anymore) I had accumulated roughly $1.32 in revenue. Although that was probably sometime in 2007, I am fairly certain it isn't up much beyond $3.78, and frankly, even if I COULD remember how to log in to my account, it's too depressing to know the balance. Besides, I don't need any gum right now, so cashing out my earnings would be kind of a waste.

I know there are plenty of really really successful (meaning cash-earning) blogs out there, and I salute them. But I also know people who have blogs that started out like mine, a way to tell my life stories from Mexico while I was there to the people back home, who have decided to put a little widget situation on their home pages asking for donations. Um. I don't know. I have kind of an issue with that. I mean it's one thing if you started your TO MAKE MONEY. But kind of another when you are doing this only to fill people in on the haps of your life. Maybe you have a more interesting life than other people do. Maybe a lot more people are tuning in than you ever imagined possible when you started the dang thing. Maybe you are starting to feel incredibly popular. But really, are these all good reasons to ask your readers for donations? I mean, why am I going to pay you? My life won't change if I never read you again. I already contribute to enough charities - you have it a lot better than they do. Trust me.

I don't have anything at all against advertising on the blog (hence the Google Ads), selling advertising space on your popular blog, or any of that. What I DO kind of have an issue with, if you are like me, some chick just writing to fill the time and exercise the brain, is putting a button on your blog saying Give Me Some Money (essentially). For like, no reason. I don't know. I mean, I guess if they are actually generating some income from that, then good for them. But bad for the rest of us because it just illustrates how flipping robotic people are, how we truly are living in a world teeming with sheep that will do anything just because it was suggested to them by a somewhat popular website.

Look, don't get me wrong, if someone wants to hand me a wad of cash just because I am somewhat entertaining every now and again, fantastic. I have like three potential trips to book and not a whole lot of money to do it right now. But to link to your site on all of the social networking sites and in the signature line of your emails and on public forums and as graffiti on an underpass off I-405, and then have something on there that just comes right out and says Pay Me For No Apparent Reason, Aunt Doris, I don't know. It just bothers me.

But that's probably why I don't have any money. I'm too much of a dreamer. Who just can't seem to figure out what to write about today.