: brace yourselves :

This is the captain speaking. Please prepare for an unscheduled landing, ladies and gentlemen. Our little flight of fancy has been diverted due to a sudden loss of altitude.

Our new destination is the record book: fewest visits ever this month. We’re witnessing history, you and I — along with one, possibly two other passengers. In the interest of full disclosure, however, publikworks’ first month saw lower numbers overall. That was in June of 2011, but it was only a partial month, not a full thirty days. It doesn’t count.

Time to reassess, boys and girls.

Not just what I’m doing or how I’m doing it, but why. I need to examine the motives here. If I’m in this for the numbers, I should quit. If it’s for fame, I should laugh. It can’t be the money, there’s none to be made. What then? I’ll be honest; I don’t have the first clue. Force of habit, maybe.

This is what I do, you know, what I’ve always done in some form or another most of my life. With varying degrees of success, obviously. In economics there’s a theory called the Law of Diminishing Returns, whereby the benefits gained are less than the money or energy invested. And I have to wonder, has publikworks reached that point? Have I? And I guess that depends on what benefit I’m expecting.

As a goal, stats are incredibly shortsighted. Big numbers are head-turning, low numbers are discouraging, but neither is proof of anything. Stats serve mostly as a distraction, I think. I’d like to ignore them, turn a blind eye, but can’t. They’re gruesome things, as morbidly fascinating as the scene of an accident, and I can’t look away. It’s sick, but there you have it.

Perhaps if I’d paid more attention to the work and less to the numbers, I wouldn’t be in this sorry state of decline. Or if I could figure out what I’m trying to accomplish by slogging away at this. Why do I bother? Well, maybe I’m hoping to find out what’s going on up there, in my head. I’m almost afraid to look, really, it’s a curiosity shop in there.

I need to step back, consider the options. Land-based travel, for instance, a scooter as opposed to aircraft. A nice, calm sailboat. Parking myself in the shade sounds good, too. Anything that gives my arms a rest, I’d like to stop the flap-flap-flapping. I refuse to limp along, though, scraping bottom.

I’d rather crash. There’s some dignity in that.

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