The classic line from the visionary poet Theodore Roethke;

**** This is a look back at an essay from 2017****
But the truth is, before you can BE you must first BECOME.
I know what you are probably thinking. “What is this idiot rambling on about now?”
Well, sometimes you simply have to spout a lot of love and hoo-haw and just pretend it means something. That is the core, I think, of what philosophy is all about.
But maybe a list of what I have already become will get the idea knitting itself together. You know, a list of the things I can already just BE.
I have already become college educated. I have a BA in English and an MAT in Education (Master of the Art of Teaching). Those letters my college years bestowed upon me are only an “N” short of being an anagram for BATMAN. So I have almost become BATMAN.
I have also finished becoming a teacher. In fact, I have spent 31 years becoming a teacher. I have gotten so teacherfied over the years that I am actually now becoming a retired teacher. I haven’t learned the art of retired teacher yet. It is still gonna take a bit of practice to start getting it right. But I can get a kid to sit down and shut up with just a look. I can read the mind of a glum-faced student and know we are about to have a bad day. And I always know when to tell a really awful joke so that the students know their only hope of keeping their lunch down and retaining their sanity is to ask me to please get back to today’s lesson. So I can BE that, at least in theory. I am still BECOMING retired.

I am a living, breathing human being. I have been that now for sixty years and eight months. I have practiced it enough that I can BE that without even thinking about it. Well, not now, just most of the time I don’t have to think about it.
But I did make a huge mistake fairly recently in applying for a chance to be a blogger for an AANR-affiliated website. Yes, that’s right, the American Association for Nude Recreation. I signed on to write about being a nudist.
I am asked to write a review of the nearest naturist park, the Bluebonnet Naturist Park in Alvord, Texas. I am hoping to find a day for a day-visit that won’t find a lot of people there. Ummm. How did I get roped into BECOMING a nudist? Is it too late to back out now? Or would that be UNBECOMING?
But most of all, I have labored long and hard at BECOMING a real writer. I have two books already published. Aeroquest and Catch a Falling Star. You can find them both on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. But don’t buy Aeroquest. Those cheap burgle-binkies don’t deserve to make any more money off of me. I have another book coming out soon from Page Publishing, Magical Miss Morgan. It is a book I am really proud of, though these foofy publishers have done nothing to help it and a lot to mess it up for me.
But, I must admit, I have just finished reading Mitch Albom’s masterpiece, The Magic Strings of Frankie Pesto. It is a miraculous, engaging read that made me laugh and made me cry and made me fall in love with the story. And it is so far beyond what I can do that I must write a review on it, maybe tomorrow, and gush praises all over it. I can only dream of BEING a writer like that. It proves to me that I have a lot more BECOMING to work on. Sorry, Ted, I am just not there yet.































Stuff That Works
What makes people visit your blog and maybe even click “like”? I should tell you up front, I have no idea how best to navigate the crazy internet. I want to. I have a book to promote. I have ideas and experiences to share. I am a writer and I would like to make something more than excessive heartache out of being one. But how you actually go about it is still a mystery.
I know what I surf the internet for. I like artwork, especially original artwork. That is why I try to post as much of my own stuff as I can. I am an amateur artist, self-taught with a little bit of college art classes, contact with real artists, and a lot of TV Bob Ross. I surf to find other artists whose stuff catches my eye. I post about artists like Loish, Maxfield Parrish, Paul Detlafsen, and Norman Rockwell. I go to sites like DeviantArt (Example at this link) and follow artists like James Brown and Shannon Maer on Facebook. I help promote their work by sharing as often as I can. Do I worry about copyright violation with my artwork? No. I am long past the point of making a profitable career as an artist. I like having people see my work and if someone decides to claim they are the artist instead of me, I have the real originals and even some pictures of work in progress. The Big Eyes thing will not happen to me.
So sharing pictures seems to matter. I got lots of hits from the monster picture post because I used a lot of monster-movie images that people normally search for on the internet. Pictures of pretty girls work too. It doesn’t seem to matter if I drew them or if they are a picture of a relative, those pictures pull people in too.
Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.
Yes, I do believe I have just intimated that Minnie Mouse is my niece, a daughter of my sister-in-law. Lying is part of blogging. You have to put spin on things and make people understand the things they want to understand more than you need them to see what is really true in the empirical sense.
Being able to put the words “nude” or “naked” in titles or in the tags brings in more views too. Those words get lots of hits on search engines and some of the people who visit my blog looking for that actually read what’s posted. Just because an idea is a little bit naughty, it doesn’t mean only perverts and bad people respond to it.
This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.
And it doesn’t hurt to be a little funny now and then. Humor is something I look for in the posts of others. I try to be funny in my posts too… though whether they are hah-hah funny or merely eeuw! funny is debatable. Much of my humor is only intended to raise a smirk or half a smile. I am most satisfied when I make you think, “heh, that’s right, isn’t it.”
This is Millis, not me. He was an actual rabbit that was turned humanoid by a scientist’s experiment with alien technology.
So why is this post called Stuff That Works if, as I am claiming, I really don’t know anything about how blogging works? I may have been a little less than truthful when I made claims. Or maybe I was claiming with a little bit of “tongue in cheek”? I hope I have demonstrated that I do know how. The thing I have yet to wrestle with is WHY. So now I have to get busy and work on that.
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