Dateline 9-24-2017

Last night I experienced a cringe-worthy realization about a thought that crosses my mind from time to time when checking the viewing statistics for this site. What I'm about to share is a point of view that I hear often and in this case, I feel that it's more of a passing thought than an actual belief but either way, it's an Ugly American outlook.

Being that I view this site as more of a tool to hone my writing skills over being a money-making opportunity, I don't put much weight into visitor's viewing habits so when I do check the stats I'm more interested in number of visits, and how many pages were viewed and rarely dig deeper than that because it doesn't matter since I'm going to continue to put out the best content that I can no matter how many readers I have.

Every once in a while I do check in with Google Analytics for shits, giggles, and more details like popular content and counties of origin. This is where the Ugly American perspective comes in since certain countries can bring up a worldview that I'm not all that proud of and I'm willing to bet that it's not the point of view you'd expect.

In other words, this has nothing to do with perceived terrorists which would be a valid guess based on the fear-based marketing that our politicians and media use to keep us under control. No, my brand of offensive thinking is much more innocent than that, while at the same time being just as arrogant in that it's a point of view where my country is the only one that has things figured out which is the furthest thing from the truth.

Now that you have the big picture setup, it's now time to move on to the smaller one which is how I sometimes fear that the frivolity of my content is a slap in the face to those who struggle in this world. I mean, there are people out there with much more valid concerns while I sit here and do what I want after opting into the starving artist lifestyle when others don't have a choice.

I would say that the above is an understandable outlook in questioning what I'm doing with my life. A two-page post about how my internet let me down by running slow is nothing when compared to those who don't even running water. I'm fine with this outlook being that this is an unavoidable inner struggle when comparing your life with those who have much less than you that would cross my mind whether or not I do write.

The Ugly American aspect of this point of view is how just seeing specific countries will trigger this line of thought as if their entire population has it worse off than me. Meanwhile, whoever these visitors are, have a device to access the internet and probably don't live in a garage. Keep in mind these visitors are also searching for frivolous terms or they wouldn't get my page as a result.

It's not like some starving kid is out there seeking steps to purify tainted water only to end up on my site jealously reading an SNL review. No, these are probably people just like me, escaping reality by delving into the digital world for a while. 

As I said from the start, this outlook strikes in passing thoughts that stem from America's propaganda about how we're the best country on this Earth mixed with the guilt of knowing this isn't actually the case with the facade still providing perceived benefits that may or may not be real since we often get sheltered from the truth.

Alright, enough with my take on this worldview that I probably didn't state clearly and if I didn't have so few readers it might do me more harm than good since we now live in a world where you have to completely bury these misguided thoughts rather than admit to an issue and work through it.

Oh well, that's all I got for today. I'll talk to you tomorrow when I'll probably jump back to my regular scheduled programming with an update on my novel rewriting progress. Until then, I hope you enjoy today's SNL review.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker