My First Viral Post (ha!)

Posted by In the"Garden Stories" category 6 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve added to this blog. By instinct, I’ll go ahead and type, “sorry about that,” here, but it occurs to me that’s unnecessary. I have been so sporadic with these posts over the years that I have no regular readers to whom to apologize.

When this blog took its current shape back in about 2013, I was in the almost-daily habit of posting (usually) brief devotionals based on the suggested daily reading of The Upper Room. As you can see by the number of posts in my Bible Reflections and Devotionals Section, (221 as of today), I kept that up for the better part of a year. And the site’s audience ticker got up to counting several hundred “unique visits” a day, thousands in a month.

Then I drifted away. And, as I say, all posts — devotional or otherwise — have been spotty since then.

As of today, the ole’ ticker says, this site has had 50 “impressions” this month. (Uh oh! That’s down 18 percent from last month! Gee whiz!)

The First Rule of Blogging is heartless: to build (and to keep) an audience, you have to blog a lot. And, “a lot” means several times a month at least, preferably several times a week and/or day. No excuses allowed — day jobs, families, writer’s block, laziness, whatever.

So, with the coronavirus canceling everything I used to do instead of blogging — church activities, tennis stuff, community meetings, family gatherings, trips to see my mother, my job as a substitute teacher, and, well, everything else — God has given me ample time to get back to blogging a lot. Hence, this first “viral” post. Get it? I kill me!

He’s baaaaaa — aaaack, I guess? Well, it looks that way. At least for a while.

(By the way, I’ve always been of the opinion that annoying cliche, when used in text, should at least include a hypen or dash so as to accurately portray its pronunciation. That’s the only reason I include it here. Just a little English teacher/perfectionist vent, I suppose. And, since I’m guessing you’re in the mood for a little more meaninglessness, I’d like to share that this ridiculous catch phrase came to popular attention via the movie Poltergeist in the 80’s. I just discovered that via a quick Google search, and I figured you’d appreciate it. But I digress.)

Despite my pun, I harbor no expectations that this post will actually go “viral” in the internet sense. That’s just not in keeping with my history. In all my years of posting stuff (on this website, on social media, on other websites I’ve run), nothing I’ve composed has ever come close to “viral” by anyone’s definition. The best I can recall I’ve ever done is about 85 likes on Facebook.

But I beg you to please indulge this tease for my next post or two. They’ll be about something I sense has strong potential for ending my slump.

See, in these opening days of our isolation here in good ole’ Sweeny, Texas, USA, I have stumbled upon a bit of an intrigue in my own front yard.

I was trimming up a Sago Palm that I’d neglected for more than a year, and discovered God had hidden something exciting in the overgrown branches. It looks like my wife and I are going to have a neat — and hopefully inspiring — little story to document here these next few days. (Possibly on new YouTube channel, too. Cheryl is currently figuring out how to set that up.)

Any idea what I found, dear reader? I may have left you enough clues to try an educated guess or two in the comments section below. Feel free to give it a go. I may — or may not — tell you whether you’re warm or cold. We’ll just have to see.

I apologize if you’re like me and tend to be annoyed by those social media riddles that never let readers know whether their guesses are correct. Don’t fret. I won’t leave you hanging forever. Coming soon (as in, who knows, a few hours? A day? Two days? Yeah, probably one of those), I’ll post all the details about what I’ve found and how it might be a little encouragement to everyone freaking out over “Coronapolyse.” Maybe that will be my first really viral post.

(And, if you want to be sure to get a Facebook notification of when I finally do post the full story of what I found, just head on over to my “page” and be sure to “like it.” Man, am I a good little internet tease guy or what?)