Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur and podcast who I seem to be mentioning all the time now, most recently in a piece about Grace Randolph, and a few mornings ago, on his daily podcast, Vaynerchuk was arguing a case he’s made before: he says that now, in the age of the Internet and social media and whatever, it’s not really possible to produce too much content. He says that all you need in order to really set yourself up, to put yourself on the map, is for one piece of material to ring true with your audience, to draw people in.

Hence, he refers to the creation of any piece of content as an “at bat.” Each at bat is an opportunity to hit a home run (is I guess the metaphor’s natural extension); each blog post, in that respect, is (conceivably) an opportunity to spark something with my audience that’d help to broaden it.

But so he’s re-hashing this argument on the podcast a few days ago, but he’s talking with a little more clarity than he has in the past, and he says that anybody who’s looking to build an audience should be releasing at leasst 100 pieces of “quality content” a day. Which sounds impossible but, if you factor in smaller stuff like tweets and status updates and Instagram stories, it’s…it’s there within the realm of possibility. Especially if you’re coming at this with the intention of being a heavy presence on social media. And even if it’s still kinda ridiculous in that case too, it’s nice to have an aspirational goal each day, one that you’re totally unlikely to reach, so that you’re always leaning slightly forward in your seat and ready to go.

Also, if the day should ever come where you’ve hit that golden number, you’d feel so entitled in finally kicking your feet up and raising a glass.

I kinda cringe to acknoweldge that I’ve got an eye toward building an audience, since it sounds to me like a confession that I’m not being sincere with what I’m producing, or that I’m just doing it for money; it’s probably clear at this point, though, that I wouldn’t have come this far if it was all about the money, because I’ve earned literally nothing from the Project outside of a Kickstarter I did a couple years ago. I’ve been pretty candid about my money situation, and I love blogging, love podcasting, so naturally I’m gonna do whatever I can to make sure that I’m someday able to maybe do this for something like a living wage.

Anyway. It might get tiresome for you, on the receiving end of all my nonsense, but for the rest of the week I’m gonna shoot for posting five new blogs each day.

Buncha reasons for this.

First, I wanna see what it does to the site’s traffic. When I post daily, I get a solid turnout of readers. 25 to 35. When I post twice a day, that turnout seems to nearly double. Sometimes it more than doubles. On the very rare occasion that I’ve posted three things in a single day, I’ve seen the turnout compound itself accordingly. So I’m interested to see if that’s maybe a fluke or if there’s really some kind of rule of compounding returns here. Does posting five times a day generate the turnout of a single post 5x? Or is there a point, after maybe three posts, where folks stop showing up? Where I’m saturating the market, so to speak?

Another thing (and this one feels kinda sinister): for the past eight or nine days I’ve been in an awful funk. Angry. I haven’t lashed out at anybody but I’ve been bending people’s ears with these long rants about how I’m being mistreated or ignored by one person or another–shit that sounds so venomous and self-pitying and unproductive. On several occasions now I’ve just stopped talking cuz I hear myself complaining and I’m genuinely confused aout why I’m behaving this way, why I’m getting so worked up because, say the cashier at the college cafeteria told me to hold on while she finished a game of Candy Crush. I’ve got friends who’ve mentioned “manstruation,” suggesting that men also go through emotional cycles that culminate in something like PMS–which sounds like bullshit, ahdunno, I’ve never seen any real writing about it. At this point I’m so mystified by my own behavior, though, I’m willing to entertain just about any ideas.

But now, suddenly, after that boozy 4th of July I feel like something’s been reset in my brain. I woke up with a serious hangover, but I felt…euphoric. Felt like I was floating. Super friendly and dutiful and productive all day. Affectionate with K. Less inclined to take things personally. Now, given the feverish productivity of the past few days, I’m wondering if I might be in…some kind of manic state? Ahdunno, and I don’t wanna venture any guesses with like legit medical terminology, but I’ve noticed this cycle in the past. It happens probably every couple months, and I wanna see if it’s a legitimate mood change or just a wave of…ahdunno. Something artificial. Like is it a quick flash of hormonal hijinks or am I just in a naturally better headspace?

A third reason for this explosion of content has to do with Steve Donoghue, a prolific book critic writing outta Boston and, as I’ve mentioned a few times here, my favorite YouTuber by a mile. Steve has made me appreciative of what he refers to, affectionately, as “old bailey hacks”; writers who push themselves to write constantly, sincerely, about anything. He also extols that kinda productivity as being one of the only avenues for cultivating a literary voice. Says you’ve just gotta be writing every day. The more the better.

So I wanna see if I can rise to the challenge of conjuring five pieces of seriously-considered writing for the blog each day, and to see if any of the above-mentioned benefits manifest. I think it’s also gonna force me to read a little more widely than usual and to think seriously about a bunch of random little things. I think it’s gonna make me, like, compulsively observant.

So yeah: apologies in advance if you’re about to feel submerged in material from me. Can’t say for sure that this isn’t something I’m gonna aim to do consistentl,y going forward, if it ends up being fun and manageable.

I’ll admit thought that I’m still definitely of the impression that writing a ton of shit will somehow dilute the strength or integrity of said shit. So ahdunno, maybe this’ll end up making everything I write kinda pale and stupid (supposing it isn’t already).

Time’ll tell.

Thanks for being patient!

-Alex