Sunday Morning Singalong: Searching for a Mood Groove

I got to sleep around 4, woke up before 8, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I can already tell that the energy levels are going to be really interesting.

It's a Sunday morning, and I want a song that just captures the state of mind that I want to have. The Commodores' "Easy" comes to mind, but that's not really the kind of groove I'm craving, so I'll pull one from the Lionel Richie post-Commodores canon, "You Are".



As far as hits go, this was not Richie's biggest success. Indeed, his best years in terms of sales were still yet to come. What does it for me is the backup vocals that lead into the refrain. This song was recorded in the early 80s, when synth was taking over everything. To me, those low, smooth harmonies take me back to an earlier time, early-to-mid 70s soul, just before disco was about to really take off.

I was reading Digger's post about exposure after finishing up my own post about the get-together. He seems to be facing an virtual existential crisis, wondering what to do with his blogs as the real converges upon the virtual.

It's a question that anonymous bloggers, myself included, can seldom avoid. Our blogs attract readers. We read others' blogs. Friendships form. The friendships arc across the HTTP barrier into the world of SMTP[1], IM, and POTS[2]. Hell, Digger's blogging is the conceptual hub that links together most of the people who showed up last night.

I've become less seclusive about my blog identity. Indeed I met three bloggers in person over the course of 2007, two from the Bay Area, and one from here. One one of my kid-free weekends in the not-so-distant future, I'm planning a trip to the Big Apple to meet up with another anonyblogger who is not part of the Diggersphere, but clued me into Digger via his post about the top 10 signs of a low libido spouse.

I've kept in touch via IM with one of the bloggers who showed up at the gathering. All of them know my name and what I look like. All attendees of last night's gathering have my meta-number now, so they can reach me on my home or cell phone. So, yeah, the barriers are breaking down. I still don't think I will ever post my full picture on here, which is probably a good thing because a "rate my picture" system at a dating website show that after 66 votes from women, I'm ranking 3.91/10.

But the bigger question for me is this. How much more life is left in 2amsomewhere? In terms of output, posts have been a lot less frequent in 2008, but in all fairness, most of the posts have mostly been of great substance, giving a lot of updates about my life.

The original charter for this blog, trying to revive a rapidly flagging marriage, was inoperative from July 2007 onward. All that was left was to see how things would disintegrate. Granted, the divorce is still to take place, but two months and change into a separation, it's pretty clear that neither STBX nor I want to go back.

Yet this blog became bigger than the scope of the original narrative. The dissatisfaction with my marriage was really a symptom of a widespread malaise that had overtaken my life. I just hadn't gotten a handle on it.

The job search became a cause for me to channel my energy, and that helped me to grow and change quite a bit. The volume and intensity of the interviewing process, painted against a background of a faltering startup with it own set of foibles, made for compelling drama. While I have had some ups and downs at work, the discussion of building websites doesn't have the same universal pull.

So where does that leave this blog? If Google Analytics is to be believed, for the past couple of months, I still have a die-hard core of maybe 10 - 20 readers. A little over half of my traffic is returning readers. About half of my traffic is from direct visits, meaning someone has either bookmarked me or typed my URL in. Only about 10 percent of my visitors land here because of searches. The rest, about 40 percent, get here by hitting someone else's blogroll or clicking on a link to a post.

I think that I need to push this blog at least until the divorce is final and then decide where to take it from there. Unless there is a full blown damaging breach of identity, I will leave 2amsomewhere up for perpetuity, or at least as long as Blogger remains extant. I think this story is worth leaving behind for others who may be facing a similar crisis.

So the bottom line is that 2am stays up. I will try to keep posting to keep you informed, but there may be a day where new posts cease. If and when that time comes, I will make it clear with a farewell post.

I need to jump in the shower now. The meeting is a little over an hour away.

[1] -- SMTP = simple mail transfer protocol, the means by which e-mail messages are transmitted from one user account to another.

[2] -- POTS = plain old telephone service