And that is without a doubt, because by next year I’ll not only be debt free, I’ll also have a nice little nest egg too, so I’ll be able to afford a hooker for V-Day 2010. 

What?  I’m not gonna do anything, I’m just looking for the company, that’s all. 

Hopefully though it won’t come to that.  Maybe sometime between now and next February, things will have changed enough that the doors to love will finally swing open, and young, single women everywhere will suddenly discover my inner hotness and wubs me for who I am, green warts and all.  It could happen right?

I want to believe it could happen, and indeed I was even given a sign that it would happen, but here’s the thing:  I suck.  I truly, unequivocally, unquestionably suck a moose’s dead cooties.

No decent girl on this earth who has lived a virtuous life full of kindness and charity should have to be punished by being saddled with a mooch guzzling hairy buttbag like me.  I really don’t deserve to have someone special in my life.  I don’t deserve to have a helpmate, a best friend, an equal partner in love.  I don’t deserve to be happy.

I’ve been a failure my whole life, and I will always be a failure.  That’s just how it is, and the kind of girl I’m looking for deserves nothing less than a winner.  Besides, it’s too late to meet someone anyway.  I’m already past my prime, I’m disabled, my hair is turning gray and I’ll probably be bald by Christmas, and God knows I’m already ugly enough as it is.  All I’ve ever wanted was to experience young love, and that opportunity has finally slipped away.  I’ll never know what it’s like to “rejoice with the wife of my youth.”  I’ll never know what it’s like to be in love with someone who’s in love with me.

I don’t even see the point of blogging any more.  All I’ve done was work myself like a dog for over two years to keep this site going and hoping some day to profit from it, and then I have to watch while others blog for merely a week and suddenly they get opportunities left and right without even breaking a sweat.  Why?  Because I suck.  Al Bundy has had more success than me.  At least he scored 4 touchdowns in a high school football game.  I was in the marching band, and I wasn’t even first string either.

Sigh.  I suck.

Tags: Al Bundy, blog, depression, failure, hooker, loneliness, love, sadness, single, success, Valentine
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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Now that it’s been two years since I created this blog, where do I go from here?

Looking back, it’s interesting to see how things played out.  When I first started out in 2006, I blogged under the assumption that I would be eventually be attending law school later that fall.  I thought the name “Habitation of Justice” was a suitable name then, and the blog would have basically been a chronicle of my adventures in law school, as well as my subsequent journey into the legal profession.  Since I was so focused on getting everything in place so I’d be ready in time for school, I rarely posted for the first year.

Eventually though I had to defer my enrollment when my hopes for a scholarship fell through.  The deferment lasted a year, but nothing had really changed by the time it ended, so I had no choice but to withdraw.  I made one more try by attempting to go to school part-time at a local university instead, but eventually those plans fell through as well.

When it seemed like my whole future had collapsed, I eventually became fixated on making money off my blog, and spent the rest of 2007 working towards that end.  I devoured everything I could find about making money online, getting more and more frustrated because most of what I read were actually tips that I had already read off dozens of other sites, so I ended up reading the same fricking material over and over again.  Yet this was an idea I wanted to work so bad because I hated my job, and the allure of being able to live off the Internet was a really strong one.  2007 was all about establishing my blogging identity and doing whatever I could to bring in the traffic I needed so I could turn my blog into a money making machine.

That of course also met with miserable failure.  I had a huge identity crisis to deal with in that I just didn’t know what my blog should be about, and I knew I had to find a niche I was passionate about but still could make good money in.  I dabbled in doing paid reviews and other gimmicks here and there, but nothing really met with success.   All I could do was burn with envy at those who had become wildly successful with their own blogs, and nothing I could do could even remotely come near to their level of success.  The kicker was reading about a 19 year old weenie punk of a teenager who was raking in tens of thousands of dollars a month by running fake review sites containing hidden affiliate links.  They seemed to make money without even trying, and they did it with impunity.

Eventually I just gave up.  2008 began with me resigning myself to the fact that I would never get anywhere in life, much less with my blog.  I had no skills, no talent, nothing I could offer that could make this whole endeavor worthwhile.  The initial hope I had during the beginning of the year quickly dissipated as my health started to deteriorate, and I sunk even lower in despair and loneliness, fearing that I would forever be trapped in a dead end job and a dead end life.

But then somewhere along the way, in the midst of all that self-pity and despair, hope once again began to spring eternal.  The more I thought about law school, the more I began to believe God was doing me a favor.  I was happy enough to accept that such was His will, but what I was NOT happy about was being strung along for over a year when I kept asking and begging for confirmation that I was going down the right path.  Yet when I think about it, maybe it took so long to get an answer because I was meant to learn something in all that, and who knows what kind of chain of events that whole experience set off too, which I may not ever truly realize the depths of until later on in life.  They say sometimes the journey itself is more important than the destination, and I think that wise proverb applies here as well.

I also started to realize that part of the reason I had such an identity crisis was because I was trying to mimic other people’s lives (and subsequently the successes they enjoyed.)  I was trying to fit the square peg that I was into the circle of life, and as long as I continued to do that I’d never be able to move forward.  When I finally began to accept that my life was being defined by a complete different set of standards apart from the world’s own, I started to feel much better.  And my blog at long last began to take coherent shape.  My journal here is ultimately, a personal one, a catalog of both my physical and spiritual journey through life.  And that is probably what it will always be.

It also occurred to me that the driving force of my personality was my humor.  It was both sardonic and sententious, expressing an outright disdain of life’s petty silliness and the world’s stupidity, especially those of Christians who should know better.  Laced in sarcasm and saltiness, my voice was a fire breathing one, crying out in the wilderness that is the Internet, and because of it I would alienate all, and yet somehow, I would also allure all.  My life was nothing else, if not a paradox.  Here the laws of physics come to an end, and the laws that only God can control begin to take hold.

I still dream of a life of self sufficiency, where I no longer have to be tied down to one place, but can travel freely and live freely, (writing about these experiences on my blog of course), and doing those things that never would have been possible had I had a wife, a family, and a house that surely would have kept me chained down with obligations I doubt I could ever fulfill.

That’s why I feel the road calling out to me.  It beckons, with its hidden dangers (as well as hidden promises.)  There may soon come a day when I will don my leather jacket, and ride my Black Stallion to wherever that highway takes me, hoping to find that spiritual and physical dwelling where true justice reigns supreme.

The Habitation of Justice.  

Tags: black stallion, blog, blogging, christian, confirmation, God, internet, journey, law, law school, leather jacket, legal profession, loneliness, making money, miserable failure, personal, success, writing
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I’m often criticized for taking a lone ranger approach to life, and while it’s true that I’ve always been a loner, I’m not against looking for help when I really need it. I knew if I wanted to build a successful blog that I was going to need some kind of support to help me get going, and one of the things that held my site back in particular has been this irritating problem where the footer just wouldn’t stay where it belonged. It kept jumping all over the place and screwing my sidebars up, so as a temporary fix I removed the sidebars from most of my pages. That wasn’t really a solution though, so I started checking around for blog designers I could hire to fix the problem for me.

If I could tell you how many emails I’ve sent out to designers that never got returned, you’d never believe it. You’d think they’d want my business, but I guess I’m not enough of a lucrative prospect for them. Snobs.

Finally, one designer got back to me and worked on my site for a couple of hours, then gave up. He also left one of my sidebars crooked, but promised to look into it, as well as look into a javascript solution I suggested to him to fix the footer. I didn’t hear back from him again until almost a week later, where he sent me a “Dear John” type email suggesting that I’m better off going with a complete revamp of the site. Sure, what’s another 800 bucks or so to destroy the months of work I’ve put into my blog and replace it with whatever crap they had in mind?

Man, when you want something done…

That weekend I rolled up my sleeves and went to work on the blog myself. I only had a rudimentary understanding of CSS, javascript and whatnot, but I kept at it for the whole day and by some miracle of God, I managed to pull it off. The footer issue was finally resolved.

I spent a few hours more banging my head on the keyboard, trying to get my sidebars looking right across different browsers, but without much luck until I started using Firebug, which is quite possibly the greatest web development tool ever invented in the history of mankind. I was able to test and check the results of CSS modifications I made in real time, rather than saving the file, uploading it, reloading my browser, and repeating as necessary ad infinitum. It also helped me locate what file was causing my site to take forever to finish loading, and after I got rid of that it was like I had a new blog all over again.

Deal with THAT, you cheapskate freelance web designers.

Seriously, I learned a lesson here. One, that God is merciful. Two, that people suck big monkey balls. In the end, I realized my project here was going to be a solo operation after all. But I do faith that whatever I can put my mind to, I can achieve, not because I’m so talented and all, but because God is capable of opening up my understanding, and within His will, I can “do all things through Christ, which strengthens me.”

Tags: blog, blogging, christ, code, css, dear john, design, designers, firebug, footer, freelance, God, javascript, keyboard, lone ranger, loner, miracle, people, snobs, solo, success, tongue, troubleshoot, whatnot
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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Tonight’s chat with a dear friend of mine reminded me of a lesson I learned a few years ago, when I went ape nuts clicking every blue link I could find at iWon.com in a bid to become independently wealthy and attract me some hot gold digging babes. I was on a mission to win something, ANYTHING from iWon’s site, so I could pay my bills, quit my job, and at long last tell my boss to go blow it out his own arse.

I also signed up for these gaming sites too in the hopes that I would become some kind of gaming master and win hundreds of dollars in cash prizes. Instead, I would win $1.50… then lose $2.00, win $4.00, then lose $5.00, and on and on.

For three weeks I was at it, playing games, click click clicking, playing some more games, then click click clicking, then play iWon’s slot machine, then click click clickity click click clicking, until my fingers started to sprain. By the end of the third week I was a few dollars in the hole and my fingers looked liked they belonged to the Elephant Man. I wasn’t getting anywhere. As usual, luck was never a lady with me, and in the end I finally gave up.

The next day I went to work, and as I was signing in, somebody handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“That’s your raffle prize.”

“My…. what??”

“Every year we raffle off the profits from the soda machines, and everyone is automatically entered. You were one of the winners, so that’s your share. 25 bucks.”

I just stood there, blown away by having finally won something, and especially at the timing of it all. I had spent the last three weeks trying to win every prize imaginable at iWon, and failing miserably at that, and now came this, a $25 prize for a raffle I never even knew existed. I still have that envelope by the way, with the money still inside.

There’s an old joke where a man prays to God to win the lottery and the Lord tells him to go buy a lottery ticket first. In my case even that part had already been taken care of. It was a sobering lesson straight from heaven, and one I had sadly forgotten over the years. As much as I’d like to believe God to rain His blessings on my life without requiring any effort on my part except to receive it, I still strive in my own strength to create my own success, and no matter how many times I fail, that lesson never seems to fully sink in for me. It’s been especially true these past few weeks, as I try to cram as much knowledge as I can find into my poor little brain so I can utilize it all to make money off the Internet, whether through my blog or elsewhere. There’s so much information to sift through, so little time to digest it all, and not enough brainpower on my part to take what I know and transform myself into the self sufficient man that I’ve always longed to be.

And yet I seem to leave no room for God in any of this. I’m trying to do it all on my own strength, relying on the world’s wisdom and philosophies, when instead I should be casting these burdens on Him, and trusting Him to once again provide that envelope of blessings when I truly need it. That’s something no professional blogger or Internet mogul will ever tell you either. But it’s the secret to real success, real peace and freedom from worry, learning that it really is all under His control. If I succeed in this new mission I’ve made for myself, it will not be because of my talents or skills or luck, but only, and ONLY, because God is gracious in His blessings towards me.

By the way, I do intend to use the prize money I won someday… specifically for when I finally meet the girl of my dreams.

Tags: babes, blessing, blessings, blown away, cash, dear friend, elephant, elephant man, failure, financially independent, fingers, gambling, get rich, God, grace, iwon, lord, loser, losing, lottery ticket, love, money, nuts, playing games, prize, prizes, profits, schemes, self sufficient, slot machine, success, win 4, winner, winning, wisdom, world, worldly
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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As I travel around the blogosphere, I’ve come across numerous tips and advice on how to successfully blog and develop a strong readership. Some of it involves developing a community of friends on social networks that could potentially bring an onslaught of massive traffic to your site. This can be done once you establish a mini-network of friends who can collectively Digg, Stumble or Reddit your blogging content, with you of course agreeing to do the same for them in return (sort of a you scratch my back, I’ll shave yours arrangement).

Some people can be really good at this for whatever reason. Me on the other hand… I can’t make friends in real life, I’m supposed to do it on here? My ass. I begged just ONE acquaintance of mine to stumble my blog so I could get a boost in traffic and of course I got blown off. Obviously this isn’t going to be a winning strategy for me right now. Ahhhhh, if only I were a hot babe, how easier this would all be…..

But anyway…

A few of the blogging experts I’ve encountered also recommended getting an outside web designer to develop the look of your blog for you (and also assist in optimizing it for search engines). Look, I don’t want no designer touching my private goomie gammies, capice? The thought of a third party having access to my code like that just doesn’t give me any warm and fuzzy thoughts, ya know?

But I can understand the rationale behind it. Blogging, or rather, professional blogging is HARD work. You’re basically doing the work of three people largely because it’s a three pronged process: promotion, maintenance and content building, all of which can be full time jobs unto themselves. And because I spent so much time on the former two for the past couple of weeks, I left myself little time for the latter.

Obviously, that will have to change as I try to find a way to balance these three aspects to blogging. But now I’m sorely tempted to just say “You know what? Screw it, it’s time I started BLOGGING, PERIOD.” It doesn’t matter that I still don’t really know who I am as a person, much less what the hell my niche should be. I think I need to just get up and go, and let the words flo’. Maybe this way I’ll somehow be able to create something coherent and interesting enough to attract a readership larger than the 5 people who regularly visit the NPR website.

Tags: acquaintance, blog, blogger, blogging, blogosphere, content building, friends, full time, hot babe, little time, maintenance, networking, onslaught, problogging, promotion, rationale, screw, search engines, social networks, success, third party, three aspects, traffic, web design, web designer
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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