About Last Week

I’m not going to lie to you; some bad stuff went down last week. However, I am apparently going to try to get away with using a semicolon in the first sentence of this post. Then apparently I’m going to tell you that I DID use a semicolon and then after that I will consider whether it is a good idea to use the word ‘apparently’ two times in consecutive sentences. Technically, I used the word ‘apparently’ three times. Now I guess it’s four.

The above paragraph is symbolic of how last week went. It didn’t go anywhere and seemed to chase itself around until nothing happened. It’s also why I need an editor, which I kind of have, an excellent one actually. But I never send my stuff to her because A) I don’t get my stuff to her on time and 2) I’m embarrassed of my work. It’s like not getting a housekeeper because you’re afraid they’ll find out that your house needs cleaning. I wonder how much my shame stifles what I could actually accomplish. Also, like the above paragraphs, my house is messy too. I’ll be contacting both my editor and my housekeeper this week. (My housekeeper? More like a fine I pay for failing at basic home hygiene.)

I do feel as if I owe everyone an explanation as to why there was no Damm Truth last week. Not that any of you were demanding it, but I feel like I must hold myself accountable for missing my self-imposed deadline. The sadists and cruel hearted will be happy to know that I have denied myself popcorn tonight as punishment for last week’s lack of post. (I may have some later, let’s not kid ourselves.)

The damn truth about the Damm Truth last week is that the site was being moved. That’s right, I hired a team of movers to show up and pack up all my blog posts and data and move it from the free confines of the WordPress servers to my own hosting solution. It wasn’t as easy as I expected it would be.

The movers showed up late, packed my stuff wrong and then got lost on the way to the new facility. Then, when the truck showed up on Monday, you guessed it, EMPTY. There was nothing inside, not even the crappy post about New Year’s resolutions. So I had to call the company’s customer service and see what the holdup was.

So naturally, while dealing with all of that, I didn’t have time to prepare our typical Monday night party and entertain. Granted, I still had access to my free WordPress site, but the problem there was that I had already done the data move, so any post on the old site would have been lost after the new server was up and running.

All of this was extremely frustrating and I traded technical support time for good writing time. Had I written anything last week, it wouldn’t have been funny, you know, like this week or the week before last week.

Oh and people were mad. It started out with a drunken voicemail from Ira Glass from This American Life. He left it at about 4:30am EST on Tuesday morning. It started off pretty sloppy with Ira explaining how the voicemail was going to go. “Part One: Steve Misses His Deadline. Part Two: Ira Doesn’t Have Anything To Read This Morning. Part Three: HEEELLLOOOOO?!?!? Part Four: David Sedaris Talks About The Time He Forgot To Give Ira A Story.” I didn’t know he was such a fan. It also sounds like Ira is a fan of gin.

The trouble continued the next day when I got a fruit basket from Ellen Degeneres wishing me well and hoping I get over whatever is keeping me from writing. It was nice, there were mangoes in it and I still don’t know how to peal those things.

I got several emails from Henry Winkler, Josh Groban, Vanessa Williams, Lester (from Willie Tyler And fame), Kobe Bryant and George Takei asking why I didn’t post last week and also why I had never mentioned them in a previous post. I politely responded with why I couldn’t possibly post last week and assured them that at some point I would mention them in my blog. I honestly think I will someday.

It was early afternoon that I received the call that made my heart skip a beat. When you hear the words, “Please hold for the White House…” after you answer the phone, it is hard to not feel as if you have been serving your country. I wondered what I would say to the President. If he or the first family were fans of my work or if he just believed what I had to say each week was encouraging the country to new heights. The voice on the telephone continued “Please hold for the White House, Black Market sales associate to receive 10% off your next purchase.” I guess Wendy wrote down my phone number on their customer list instead of hers. They do have nice stuff. The new color for the season collection is very nice.

My sister called and asked why I didn’t “like” more of her pictures on the Facebook, but I don’t think that was related.

Actually, I don’t think anyone really cared that I didn’t post last week. That’s okay. Obviously it isn’t stopping me from posting THIS week. Hopefully… Perhaps this didn’t make it to the page or the link didn’t work. Perhaps you aren’t even reading this at all. If that’s the case, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time with words you cannot read.

Why? Why go to all this trouble to move to my own servers, I wish you would ask but I’m going to answer even if you don’t? Because I’m trying to play with the big boys. I’m starting to evolve this blogging thing. By controlling my data on my own paid server, I’m building my brand away from WordPress and taking control of my domain name thedammtruth.com.

Being on my own paid server will allow me to do some fun things and offer some new services. I’ll be able to add options that would allow me to fund this hobby a bit more. I’ll be able to choose who to advertise and how much. So I will have a few ads on the site from time to time. Not many, but also not the ones that were showing up on the free site.

I’ll have a few affiliates that I will choose to rotate on to the page. The affiliates I choose won’t be those that simply make me the most money, but will offer the services that I like and use myself, like Audible.com and Amazon.com.

I’ve wanted to offer my own T-shirts on the site for quite a while now. At the risk of making everyone look as bad in clothing as I do, you’ll have several simple designs that I love and wear myself, but also tell the world that you read the Damm Truth and you’re not to be trifled with. My shirts are trifle free, or will be when I offer them.

This will be the place you tell all your friends to go to buy my upcoming ebook, whenever I decide to put THAT together.

So I wish to thank you all for putting up with my silly behavior and overlooking last week’s mishap. There may be more, but there will also be more stories as well. I sincerely appreciate the time all of you have put into reading my junk, and that’s the Damm Truth.