As alluded to in my last (barely seen) post, which was 98% photos, the writing life’s not been kind to this aspiring dude. At least not in terms of finding the discipline, time, topics, and oh yeah, inspiration. I’ve not seen that beeotch aka The Muse in a while. But when I noticed I’ve received more views in the first five months of 2026 than any other full year, and actually more than thrice my best year, I had to come here to say, WTF, WordPress? Exactly what is going on? Is it robots or genuine views? Either way, can I monetize it?

Read more: 6/6/2026: Why Are My Blog Stats Blowing Up When I’m Barely Writing?

Take a look at these two screen shots. First, is December 2024 – June of 2025. Just over 5,000 views, with almost 4,000 visitors. That alone is a HUGE jump from the years before, which never totaled over 15,000 views.

Now look at December 2025 – June 2026. That’s a MASSIVE jump to 40,000 views and over 36,500 visitors. From someone who’s posting went way, Way, WAY down the last couple of years, that is the exact opposite of what one would expect.

Here’s what the customer support person said:

“Hi there,

I checked the site, and although there is an increase in traffic, it does not appear to be a sudden spike in on-site traffic. The increase has been gradual and started around November 2025. (That’s when I concluded my epic 52,000+ miles in 10 years.)

Also, from the referrer section in Jetpack Stats, I noticed that most of the traffic is coming from search engines, Facebook, and WordPress.com Reader, which are all legitimate sources. In addition, most of the traffic is coming from the United States. All of these indicators suggest that the traffic is legitimate and not bot traffic.”

I don’t quite know what to make of it. Baby I’m showing up in search results, but I’m not getting much in terms of engagement. That means likes and comments and forwards etc. But can I finally start to make money off of this, robots or humans? After a decade of biking and writing, that would be nice. But I’ve never been attuned to the statistics or good at the capitalism game anyway. My brother got those genes, and I got the do goider ones. But hey, it led me to write this blog post, so that’s progress, right?

Speaking of writing and doing good, I recently volunteered at the ATX TV Festival for the first time. I enjoy the televised motion picture arts as much as the next dude, and I finally signed up in time to work the 15th season (for free, match, or rather a trade). I got to sit in on some cool panels and hear about the business of being a creative, including with some producers,  writers, and actors. See the snaps below for some stars you may recognize.

One of the latter included a guy who shared with me what seemed like a long period of deep eye contact with a sly smile as he passed by my station outside the historic Paramount Theatre in Austin. (Soon it will close for 11 months for a restoration.)

He seemingly stared deep into my eyes or possibly soul, it I have one. It lasted probably only five seconds. But it felt like time slowed down into slow motion. Your dude is straight (not that there’s anything wrong with being otherwise), but he’s a handsome fellow, and those seconds were mesmerizing. It was like, well, a scene from a TV show. And then tonight he was on my TV screen. Pretty cool. Who was this guy? Murray Bartlett of White Lotus Season 1 on HBO; his new show is called Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on Apple TV.

Anyway, the point of that was to say one of the other volunteers I met is a super nice dude who works in the video production business. From animation to commercials to several short films, he’s made a bunch of stuff. We got to talking and he challenged me to write just five pages for a short film.  It’s usually one page per minute, as we say in the biz. If it’s any good, maybe he’d consider actually making it. I said I would try and write three of them.

Persistent readers (all seven or 12 of you) will recall I wrote a memoir on how to bicycle as a fit but fat older person. It got way too long and sits on the digital shelf collecting digital dust, waiting for mythical money to appear to hire an editor. But a while back I started on a fictional novella. I said I’d keep it to 100 pages and I got pretty close, but haven’t figured out an ending. That stalled when my young writing critique partner decided to take a job as a professor and stop meeting. But I keep imagining it as a movie.

So, now I have this challenge to write just five or 15 pages. They need to be good, solid, tight pages. But first, I have to learn how to write screenplays. That means reading books or watching YouTube videos or something. I have a month to do it, and a week’s already gone by. That’s because the nearby Half Price Books store collection of screenplay tomes is dusty and musty. While I wait for a library book to come in, I should just be finishing the novella and revising it. And now I’ve cracked the laptop open and the knuckles, I’m gearing back up to do some writing again.

And here we are back to the writer’s problems: discipline, time, topics, and oh yeah, inspiration. Yet, humans are a storytelling species, whether we’re any good at it or like it or not. Whether it’s told around a camp fire, in a song, in a book, or on a big or small screen, we love a good yarn. And all of those forms except the campfire are written down. We have songwriters, and authors, and composers, and so on. The words of a play are called the book; when an actor has memorized them, they go off book. And a TV show or movie has a play that is shown on a screen: a screenplay. A good TV show has many factors, but perhaps the most important facet is that it’s well written.

That’s all to say that while I may be becoming slightly less unknown in this tiny speck in a corner of a small room within a huge mansion in a city of millions on a large planet of billions, or rather my blog stats suck slightly less and may not be real anyway, maybe they are. Someday soon I could have a screenplay produced into a short film. Which could become a long film. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll see the words of a dude up on the big screen. Who’s to say it can’t happen?

By the way, I’ve been told I resemble a combination of the rugged and heroic boyish good looks of Robert Redford with the zaftig every-man working class yet intellectual appeal of Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Okay, the person who told me that was myself to the mirror. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue.) And maybe the only person truly qualified return myself is moi.

Delusions of grandeur aside, I’ve got to get back to somehow miraculously finding and then working and surviving a freaking job to pay the bills… just like everyone else who is not a one percenter or successful movie star. But a dude can dream. Don’t kill my dream, or harsh my buzz, or yuck my yum, as the kids say these days.

Whether you make it to the big leagues of Hollywood or New York publishing or the Emmys or Grammys or Oscars or Tonys, or just write it in a journal for your family to read, go tell your own story. Everybody’s got one. As a dear college mate from Polynesia and the Phillipines used to say, “Let’s talk story.” Make it a good one. I’ll try to do the same.

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