nykola.com | bothering people since 1981

The site's been on the fritz today thanks to some incompetence on the part of people in Scottsdale, Arizona that I pay to in fact not be incompetent. If you're reading this, consider yourself one of the few. My post for the day was lost in the hubbub and I don't care to find it. It probably wasn't all that insightful anyway so on to less important topics.

I frequently get asked about this little black chick mini-me mascot, so here's the short of it. The black chick's been through about three phases. Phase one I won't even show, but the second phase can be viewed here and was drawn by yours truly when I had much shorter hair. My drawing skills lack so the third version was done by a professional graphic designer by the name of Heather of Lisette Design. She is an excellent illustrator that captures the playfulness that I adore. Hopefully she will also be re-designing black chick version 4.0 to be released with the next site re-vamp in '05.

Personally, I would've canned the fashionista broad a long time ago, except that people emailed me to tell me otherwise so I guess she's here to stay; kinda like a "Where's Waldo?" character.

I'll reflect on this officially in the new year, but January 1st is my "official" one-year anniversary of "blogging" or my "blogiversary" or whatever cheesy name they call it. I'm not about to get all sappy and say the time went by so fast and time flies when you're having fun and all that other fluff. Nope. While it has been fun, it's also been a very long and arduous process of settling in to my writing voice, becoming comfortable with it, being misunderstood, getting over the need to be understood, and trying to pry myself away from my computer.

Before I started my own blog, I was a reader of a few others and I must say, I have a higher respect for the people that have been doing this for 4+ years. Pushing out 700+ coherent, independent words every day is one of the most challenging mental exercises I've encountered as a writer. But I must say, I love it. I was once told that the late Chicago Tribune writer Mike Royko published 800 quality words, five days a week, for nearly four decades. This blogging stuff pales in comparison to that so I have few complaints. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, and smarter (and more of a stress case) too.

Gurl, I don't know how you do it. The volume is tremendous and it's good quality blogging, too. I'm strugglin just to do my 100 words/day. Mike R sure was prolific, but I'm gonna assume that was his f/t gig. Most professional columnist only pump out one to three articles/wk.

Doing this amt in addition to a f/t gig is just ... well, let's just say you'll wanna be ticklin something other than a keyboard at some point in your life, no?

Congrats on the blogiversary! You were one of the bright spots of the blog year. I enjoy the
"Ambra experience" and look forward to more "people bothering" in 2005.

I'm feeling old when you bring up Royko who's been dead for a few years, yet I grew up reading him in Chicago. He did fairly well keeping with the "working class Joe" perspective.

Careful what you wish for, or somebody someday might recognize your talent and offer you the big $$ to write full time. You could maybe even afford a posse, after the movie deal of course.
[Then it would be on to a line of your own designer clothes, but I'm getting ahead of yourself.]