"Happy is he who . . . writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale - who writes always to the unknown friend."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Maintaining Movies At Dog Farm often makes me feel like a precocious child being indulged by bewildered parents. Many of my friends and acquaintances don't really seem to understand my compulsion to spend so much of my time curating my own little corner of the web. Adrienne often catches me surreptitiously scribbling ideas on scraps of paper and teases that I'm writing diary entries. My co-workers primarily monitor the Dog Farm by way of posts on Facebook and Twitter, where I undoubtedly rank well below the latest grumpy cat pic or dog shaming meme. Every once in a while one of them will say, "Hey, I saw that thing about that thing that you posted." Then there's my mother, who thinks I'm some kind of Internet rock star. Of course that's only because she doesn't really understand anything about the exotic and unknowable land of Internet.
The Dog Farm does get visitors from around the world, but many of them land here by way of keyword searches like "farm dog porn." I always feel bad about how disappointed those people must be when they click on the search result and find a movie blog. Occasionally I receive a request from a stranger seeking promotion, and I usually end up feeling guilty about that, too. The Dog Farm has far too little traffic to offer any significant exposure, and so I generally decline.
I have a crisis of faith on an almost weekly basis, what Douglas Adams called "a long dark teatime of the soul." I ponder why I sweat bullets in front of the laptop doing something I'm neither obligated nor compensated to do. I suffer bouts of paranoia. I'm certain everyone is whispering about me, as though I'm a cracked but harmless lunatic who believes he's building a rocket to the moon in his basement.
I get panicky when I can think of nothing to write about, and I get irritated when I spend ninety minutes watching a movie about which I'm not sufficiently inspired to comment. I obsess over the tiniest details of my page layout, even though no-one really pays any attention to those details. I feel obliged to remind myself regularly that I do this primarily for my own gratification and not in the interest of garnering wealth and fame. It's good, at least, that I have clarity on that point, because nothing that I've done here has made me a dime or landed me on a magazine cover.
I'm sure many will see the blocks of uninterrupted text here and immediately bounce, but that's okay. If you've read this far, you're probably a blogger yourself. You understand. Perhaps some of what I've written even struck a chord with you. If so, that's likely just an indication that you care about what you're doing. Your willingness to share certain thoughts with the world is commendable and brave.
If, however, you've read this far and aren't a blogger yourself, you're most likely the unknown friend for whom I've been writing. I'm pleased to meet you, friend. Let's discuss movies. I've got ninety-nine talking points archived and ready.
