Mental masturbation, or, what I learned from doing Blog365

First of all, I'm amazed I did it. OK, sure--to make sure I adhered to the letter of the law, I farted around with my date and time settings. And daily readers might have been a little confused at times, because sometimes I was blogging someplace other than here (like here or here or here or even here.) But I did it.

As far as I'm concerned, this is even more amazing than losing 30 pounds and keeping it off. Which (in case you haven't been keeping score) I haven't managed to do yet. And partly I blame blogging, because sitting on your rear end in front of your laptop is not conducive to weight loss. Even if you are exercising your fingers.

Well. Now that I've landed heavily (pun intended) on this side of the Blog365 experience, now that I could buy and wear a t-shirt saying

I bored the Internet for a year
and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

my primary response is: why? What good did it do?

Let's explore this question, shall we? Here are some not-very-frequently asked questions about Blog365--which I made up--and my answers--which I also made up.

1. Did Blog365 improve your writing? Maybe. It certainly made it go faster. Let's face it; do anything at all every day for a year--even masturbate--and you'll be able to do it faster.

2. But what about quality? Quality is an issue, even with masturbation. Say you masturbate and have a sort of half-hearted, not-particularly-intense orgasm. What do you do, complain that you don't love yourself anymore? Break up with yourself? No, you roll over and go to sleep. (That is, if you're female. I don't know what guys do. And I don't want to know, OK? This is a family blog.) Well, let's face it: quality is even more important when another person is involved, say, for example, with blogging, where you really do kind of hope a reader or two will materialize.

3. How much faster did your writing get? Much. And with not even that much of a diminution of quality. Like what I've typed so far? Took 94 seconds. Truth. But again--speed isn't the whole picture. I'll use my masturbation analogy again, because it's occurred to me that what this blog has needed all along is more talk about masturbation. So anyway, how impressive is the ability to have an orgasm after only 20 seconds of stimulation? It's efficient; it would make a good party trick, but in the larger scheme of things, aren't we really looking for something more intense? I believe that we are.

4. Would you say then that the internet meme is the Hitachi Magic Wand of blogging? I would indeed. Memes get the job done, but they're not especially memorable.

5. What advice would you give to other people about to embark upon Blog365? Keep all of your drafts; break down long posts into shorter posts; write reviews; write reactions to other blog posts; make fun of the government, religion, or your family. And when inspiration fails, fire up the Hitachi.