This is the 1,000th post on this Montana blog.
It took me nearly 5 years to get that many, though I probably could have gotten here sooner if I hadn’t put up 345 posts on the 2014 Montana Election Blog.
On top of that I have another 735 posts on the writing blog.
So this site has a lot of content.
Not a lot of visitors these days - just 700 unique people yesterday, and another 3,000 page views.
So I get about 20,000 unique hits on this site each month. That ads you see on this site aren’t that popular, either - I get around $20 a month for putting them up.
Anyways, I figured I’d better get another post up soon as you probably don’t want to see this Colter’s Winter promo post all week.
I mainly put that up due to spammers.
You see, I have a mailing list with around 200 people on it. Around 2 months ago I started getting new email signups each day.
The problem is that they’re all Russian spammers. So I sent out a promo email this week with the goal of identifying and eliminating some of them.
Didn’t work too well, and now I figure I might just abandon my email list entirely. We’ll see.
Something else I abandoned entirely is Facebook.
It’ll be three months tomorrow that I’ve been without Facebook, as I deleted my account a month before the election (it takes a month of non-activity before Facebook will actually delete it).
I have not missed it.
Really, for the better part of the past year all I did on Facebook was open it, scroll down the newsfeed for a bit, and realize to myself, ‘Boy...I really don’t need this shit in my life!’
For many, Facebook is a great place to stay in touch with friends and family (don’t ask me why, as a society, we can no longer do that in person).
My problem is that in 2016 I began gathering signatures to legalize marijuana, tons of people found out about this, and they all wanted to be my ‘friend.’
So I friended them on Facebook, and then I started getting all this mega, hardcore, to-the-left-of-everything posts on my feed.
Talk about ultra-leftists!
And trust me - it ain't just liberals that smoke pot. For instance, Roger Stone has a medical marijuana card in Florida. As people get older and get sick, left and right don't really matter anymore.
And then reading the ‘debate’ you’d sometimes see on these posts among ‘friends.’ It was discouraging, seeing some of the opinions people had, and how they reacted when you did not share them.
So I got sick of it, stopped using Facebook, and finally just got rid of it.
I haven’t missed it at all, and wish I would have done it sooner. Perhaps your life will improve if you get rid of Facebook. For me, it’s just been a huge timesaver as I’m not wasting time looking at things I don’t really care about from people I don’t really know.
Sometimes I wonder if I need Facebook to sell books or maybe even attract voters.
I don’t think so.
I never really sold that many books using it (I’ve sold over 13,000 and made over $32,000 in profits so far) and I never really got in touch with that many voters on the platform, even when using paid advertising campaigns.
Remember, in the four times I’ve run for office over the past 5 years, I’ve never gotten more than 150 votes.
Maybe this will be my year, though. Filing for Missoula City Council starts in just about 2 months - April 18 and closes June 17.
The election will be November 5, and if we need a primary, that will happen on September 10...though you might remember last year the city did not do this after they found out it’d cost $20,000 to do a primary.
I’ll probably file to run. It costs $150.
I wouldn’t think about running if Missoula could properly plow its streets, pick up its dead leaves, manage its deer, fill its potholes, and provide other essential services ahead of tax dollar giveaways to rich, private developers.
Speaking of the rich...how about that State of the Union last night, eh?
I didn’t watch it myself. I decided my time would be better spent finishing up my season as the winning Cleveland Browns on Madden 19.
I’m sure a lot of the rich congress people would have rather played video games last night, too.
One thing I am so happy about from Trump is his decision to get us out of these endless wars.
I cannot begin to express my frustration at the Democrats, who would rather spite Trump and keep the nation in these never-ending wars then help the president get us out of them.
When did Democrats become war hawks?
It really is sad.
Never forget that one day we’ll be rid of all these morons. Trump will be gone in 2 to 6 years, and most of the rich assholes in Congress will die off over the next decade.
Sure, rich assholes will replace all those people...but I do have hope that eventually the current generation of ‘leaders’ will be replaced by one that has a different mindset.
Maybe this country can get back on track then. I don’t see that happening until the mid-to-late 2020s, however.
Finally, I just want to point out a couple things that really alarm me.
First, none of my neighbors shovel the sidewalks.
People are just too busy/lazy in the mornings to do that. They’re too busy rushing to work. When they get home, they’re too tired or just don’t care to do it.
We see this issue across the state and the nation, with streets where only one house will have a sidewalk shoveled, and the other houses are all too lazy to do it.
This laziness issue is indicative of much greater problems in our society.
Second, we have all these government workers going back to work and getting their back pay, but I wonder...how many are going to seriously start saving?
I mean, most of them were so low on funds over the past month that they visited food banks.
Who wants to live like that?
I hope these government workers - and all who watched them suffer - realize that they better start saving up some money so they have emergency funds.
Personally, if you don’t have a $1,000 emergency fund...well, what do you have?
Maybe a fancy house (with a huge mortgage) and a couple cars in the garage (with huge monthly payments)?
Once you get that emergency fund, how about saving up six months worth of expenses?
Most Americans will view that as impossible, and certainly wouldn’t be willing to make the necessary lifestyle changes to ensure they could save up that money.
And as a nation, we don’t even talk about how fragile most households are when it comes to money.
I wish our media would talk about this, but then that might turn people off from buying all the crap they don’t need, but which the media companies continually shove down their throat each day via advertising.
And we actually think the media in this country is our friend.
Mostly, I wish people would save more for rainy days...but I know this won’t happen.
Alright, folks - I’ll see you for one-thousand-and-one.
