Signed up for this website called Vocal.

Despite its name, it is actually text based. It’s one of those websites where writers like me can write articles and put them on the site and if enough people read them, we actually get paid with real, honest spendable cash.

So on the one hand, opportunity. On the other hand, competition.

I know I’m a good writer. I know I can write stuff that people think is very funny. I can also write things that being find to be very provocative, to put it mildly.

In other words, I can really piss people off.

So the real question is whether or not I am willing, ready, and/or able to write with popular appeal in mind.

The answer is a resounding maybe.

I have nothing against writing for popular appeal. I am no literary snob. I want to make people happy with my writing. I don’t care what other writers think of me.

So there is no conflict there. Instead, the conflict stems from a combination of fear and laziness on my part.

The fear is fear of exposure, of course. What other fear is there for a socially anxious dude like me? If I put my writing out there for other people to see, I am exposing myself instead of hugging the shadows like a good little wraith.

And it’s not even that I fear criticism. Criticism I can handle. I am confident that I can take the criticism, evaluate it, and either agree with it, in which case I learn from it, or disagree with it, and laugh it off.

No, the exposure itself is what I fear, not the consequences thereof. Leaving this warm little cage that goes nowhere is a big challenge for me. It can feel like if I go out there, I will die like Dracula in a sunbeam.

Not true, obviously, but the feeling remains.

After all, I am crazy.

The other challenge. Sure, I am a great writer – but am I good enough to beat the no doubt thousands of other writers on this platform? Or at least do well enough to make a little money at it?

Possibly. Probably. Maybe, I honestly don’t know.

And I won’t know until I try, which I will do once I am done this part of my day’s blogging. I have written a lot of fairly good stuff over lo these many years, and It’s all saved on my hard driver somewhere, and so when I am done my First 500 here, I will go poke around my collection and find something in decent enough shape to be my little trial balloon to get used to the interface and see if I can catch people’s attention.

It’s that second bit that worries me. I have no talent for self-promotion, at least not yet, and that means I have no idea how to get people to read my stuff in the first place.

So this might go nowhere. I might put something out there, have it go completely unnoticed, and be no further ahead.

But at least I will have tried.

More after the break.

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It’s possible that I will move this blog to Vocal.

Not likely, mind you, but possible. This blog’s primary purpose is self-expression, not entertainment. Putting it on the Vocal platform would only work if it turns out that my writing in this blog resonates with people.

And it might. Certainly, it might appeal to other people with depression, and those who are involved with someone with depression. I could see establishing myself as a highly articulate “voice of depression” and sort of building a brand out of that.

Of course, there’s lots of other people with both depression and blogs out there. But few are as articulate as me and even fewer have also given the subject as much thought and examination as I have.

So it’s a possibility. At the very least, I could move the depression related entries of the future to Vocal and see if I can develop a following there.

This just in (from my brain) : I should start commenting on other people’s blogs in order to make myself a known figure on Vocal.

At the very least, if I wrote about depression, I would be “writing what I know”.

This would also be true if I wrote about video games.

Not reviews, though. At least, not at first. I can’t afford the latest hotness in video games most of the time, and I can’t imagine there is a lot of demand for the kind of games that I can afford, which are usually at least three years old.

If I started making money at the gig, then I might be able to afford the new hotness while it is still new and hot. Either that, or I would become enough of a “real” video game critic to get my games for free.

But barring that, I would be sharing my thoughts on video game theory. What makes a game good, what makes it suck, what is the nature of grind and how games can avoid it, what makes a game replayable, and so forth and so on.

I have played video games for nearly my entire life (to be fair, the games that came out when I was an infant weren’t that good) and I have had a lot of time to think about them and what makes them tick.

And I have oodles of other interests, of course. Politics. Psychology. Science. Philosophy. Science Fiction. Science history. The list goes on and on.

So who knows. Maybe I will end up with a whole bunch of blogs, each one dedicated to one of my many interests, and the ones that are successful will get more entries and the ones that are less successful will wait til I really feel I have something to say.

Or can’t think of anything better, anyhow.

My point is, I got plans.

And I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.