The Sole Proprietor has been dinking around with this web page for a while now. He's had an ISDN line and a domain name for over three years, during the first two years of which he didn't do much more than get a home page up, type an intro and add a couple of links. Dorky, but, you know, a start. Early last January he began posting some of the pictures he'd been taking coupled with a light weight commentary and its been downhill ever since. He's cleaned up some of those old entries, but left the rest as they were created to show how he began and how he's progressed.

This current chapter began when he redesigned his page, what?, some three months back and applied for a link on BaddGrrl's site to his old NBBC.COM page then registered APERSONALSITE. BaddGrrl had started the "Journal Ring" and the Sole Proprietor would read her journal entries and one day, who know's, the moon was howling and the werewolves were full, so he decided to join, start a journal, get written up in The New York Times and invent a life. He'd never heard of Web Rings before, but the idea seemed right. He began to discover other pages out there with people playing this game with great skill, well beyond anything the Sole Proprietor had imagined.

But now, he thinks, time for a change. The photographs need to go into another section. He wants to be more active as a photographer this new year and to shoot more people shots in black and white. He's been approached by some people who want him to shoot for their paper. No money, but, you know, an assignment. Access. Credentials. A way to measure success. If there's a photo that makes sense for the journal, then OK, Rien Post and BaddGrrl do this very effectively in their journals, but otherwise just a daily entry, some longer, some shorter (A lot shorter. This 500 words a day stuff would be fine if he didn't have to get up every morning and fool away his life at work.).

Also the tone. He reads like a god damned ten degrees away from the real world fuck who hasn't got a clue. Maybe he could develop a style that was a little hipper so he could be a cool ten degrees away from the real world fuck who hasn't got a clue. Hip was a trap of the 50's and 60's and he managed to avoid it through genuine effort, but its getting old. It hasn't led to salvation or monetary gain (behaving like a dork), so maybe let it come in over the top. Hello hip. Hello cool. Be my guests. Put your shoes up and partake of the medicines. Life is short.

Well, this is a Sole Proprietor thing. The writing goes slowly, wooden at one point, kind of squishy and without form at the next. The idea is for the two to come together. They aren't.

He's been reading other journals outside the Ring. He hits on Rien Post's all the time inside the Ring, but takes a look outside at DJR, squishy, Ceej's black book, Letters from OZ, scoop, the pillow book and waits with all the others for sugar & preserve to return along with some others that travel in circles of their own. He's just begun to learn of their existence and how they're linked so he hasn't developed any real opinions yet (except they're pretty good). Internally, Iantestines seems to be back and that's good, BaddGrrl seems to have deserted us altogether and that's bad, but maybe she'll be back soon as well. Probably some sort of drug thing or mad "holiday with a handsome lad" love nest marathon near the docks. He's thought of adding a list of these sites, but probably won't.

Their writing is good, though. Seems more honest than his own. The layout is better. They've been writing longer. Their mothers treated them better as kids. Their fathers gave them writing instruments and paper when they were little and they've had a lot more time to practice. They're smarter. Some of them have hooters that won't quit. Which means they write better than the Sole Proprietor does. Which means he'd better quit or practice. Quit or practice. What a concept.

So, between now and the New Year he will design some sort of format that will allow him to make a quick entry on the fly at four in the morning. Well, maybe not a four in the morning. Sole Proprietors, even when they're cool and hip, like to get to bed around 10. He'll shoot for daily, but not this create a magazine page, feed a slide into the scanner, play with the layout sort of stuff. Stop reading those other journals that give him an inferiority complex. Well, actually, continue to read them, but cop some licks. Build an ego. Get another lens for his camera. Get a life. Get out of the house. Right now. Before it gets dark.