It pisses me off that in order for people to read your work you need to be telling them how to do something. Your title needs to be so blatantly obvious that even the least educated member of society can feel drawn to it. Using the bait of knowledge to get people to click through to your pontificating (I've been waiting to use pontificating in a sentence for weeks now - I love the sound when it rolls off your tongue - go on, put on a snobby accent for deeper effect [waiting for you to say "pontificating" in a snobby accent] cool huh?) is a primitive tactic, and I can assure you that the only time I indulge in its usage is to illustrate something very important.

For example - "How to stop armpit sweating" - an important theme I'm sure we'd all agree, but worthy of being at the top of the rankings in an article website that I contribute to? My cells are apoptosing (not officially a word, but lots of people think it should be) under the pressure to compete for eye space with these people.

Why does it have to be so damn desirable to get a little appreciation? So desirable that you are willing to sell your soul to the sweat devil in exchange for short term flattery mixed in with a little long term anonymity. I get especially annoyed because I spend countless hours pontificating, but no one is clicking through to my blog.

If this desire continues, I am imagining a future where my greatest achievement will be getting to the top of the search rankings with something as mundane as "How to open a door without hitting yourself with it". I think I'd prefer go down without any achievements, which puts me pretty much bang on track right now.

I mean they could have sexed it up a bit with something along the lines of, "Get laid by beating bad body odour", or gone for the wanna-be-smarter audience with, "Channel those unsightly and odorous excretions from underarm edifices towards your grey matter and increase your IQ by 35 points!" or even made a stab at the literary crowd with, "How to conquer the plague that is the unimaginable horror and turmoil impinged on those who suffer from the effuges of underarm sweat" ( I know effuges is not a word, but unsuspecting readers will faint at your feet, trust me).

I find myself lost in navigating the shoulds and shouldn'ts of this frustrating art of writing, getting twisted and tortured by the work and advice and opinions of others and of myself. "Be creative" "Be unique" "Be remarkable" "Write what you know" "Create for yourself", crash up against "Know your audience" "Create for your audience" blah blah blah. As contradictions dance and play, giggling at me from behind their safety net of unverifiable fact, I throw the rotten bananas that I meant to keep for banana cake at them.

I feel like writing a post about it - I could call it, "How to write 470 words without reaching any conclusions" and no one will read it. Boo hoo.