Aim Higher
I haven’t always written online under this name. I’ve had a couple of different sites along the way, some obliquely addressing my name, others marked with an untraceable pen name, all mostly unread by the overwhelming majority of living souls on this planet.
I figured setting up shop here under my own umbrella would be a triple-win situation: I’d have the freedom, luxury and motivation to publish 1) finer material on a 2) more regular basis, both while building my reputation as slowly and surely as a medieval church until I could 3) figure out how to do this for a living.
One step along the way – not even a step, more like a landing on a bigger staircase – was to pop up first on Google. I know there’s a portion of that overwhelming majority of living souls on this planet who couldn’t care less about Google, have never used it as a verb and still think of it only as the endearing misspelling very, very large number. I applaud their restraint, and I suppose also salute their ignorance. They don’t share my faith in achieving immortality through technology. Too busy enjoying mortal life to worry about crap like that. But to me, making it there would be to make it everywhere.
I was hell bent on having a name for myself – my own name, in fact. But the sad existential truth is that I’m not alone in being Dan Mooney. I’m apparently also a college basketball coach, a former minor league baseball player, a higher-up at an airplane company, among other nice things. If this is what the parallel worlds theory is about, and I’m fairly certain it is, I’ve had a whole lot of fun in my other lives so far!
I thought: Before I show up in ten years in the online versions of once mighty and tangible newspapers, I need to make it to the top of Google. When word of mouth gets to a point where people will want to find my site, I don’t want the basketball coach getting all my traffic. Visitors looking for my whimsical yet thoughtful take on modern life would be sadly disappointed! Moreover, they’d probably click through to another site straightaway. I couldn’t let that happen, however many years from now.
Curious, when I’d finished setting up the site a few days ago, I typed my name into Google to see what kind of progress I’d made on that front:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dan+mooney
Damn.
If I knew now what I had known four days ago – and I do – I would know that getting to the top of Google rankings can take less time than watching all extant episodes of 24. I’d also know that for me, right now, that’s a lame and petty measure of fame, and success, and most of all fulfillment. Interesting, of course – satisfying, you betcha – but it rings hollow, and is not enough. It’s too easy. It’ll get a lot harder before it gets a little better. And effort should ultimately and be poured into constructing the readable content from which stem the most meaningful rewards.
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