Peaceful Virtues Epilogue
This is not part of the Peaceful Virtues series…
The purpose of this post is to get feedback about the series that doesn’t fit within the topic of the virtues, and to share some thoughts that just don’t fit within the series.
For instance, you can leave comments about the posting frequency, the wording, content structure, etc.
For those who were hoping to have another lesson on peace, I urge you to spend the next thirty minutes studying this image, provided by Vitor of Fractal Forest. As I mentioned in the conclusion to the series, I am already planning my path for future growth, and this is the first step.
I urge everybody who wants to leave a comment to stop reading when I tell them to, scroll to the bottom of the page (or follow the link in your feed reader), and post your immediate impressions of the series.
First impressions are just as important as the impressions you form after gaining further insight. Countless times, people’s impressions change as they gain more information about what goes on behind the curtain, and they look at the impressions that other people have expressed as well. I’m hoping to catch as many of the “raw” thoughts about the series that I can.
At this point, I’m looking for comments about presentation, pacing, posting frequency, and any improvements that I could make in any future series that I write.
So, here’s the point to stop reading, head over to the comments, and leave your raw impressions. 
When I first started writing this series, it came immediately after a huge breakthrough in my personal development. I was finding that I was able to slip into a peaceful mindset easily. This realization dawned on me very quickly, and when I took the time to study it, I found that there were four pieces that needed to be in place before I could find inner peace. These, of course, formed the four peaceful virtues.
As I studied the virtues more, I found that they were also attached to the past, present, future, and were timeless in scope, with honesty, of course, being timeless. Since I was posting two articles per week in the series, and there were a total of six articles, this gave me three weeks of additional study between the first and last post. I also noticed my mood change as I wrote each new article… When I wrote the introduction, these virtues were still a very new realization, and I was approaching them with wonder. As I ended the series, I was more concerned with giving analogies to help people understand, more than I was in awe at the realization. I’m not certain if that helped or hurt the series, only you can tell me that.
Also, towards the end of the series, my thoughts started turning towards what was to come next.
I experimented a lot with the way that I write the articles as well. Normally, when I write, I commit the cardinal sin of simply sitting down at the computer with a vague idea, and I just let the words flow out onto the keyboard. This is, admittedly, a very disjointed way to write, and often produces my signature posts, which I describe as bent monoliths. Each post is large, and often goes off in tangents that are sometimes unnecessary before I finally arrive at the point.
After some feedback, I attempted to outline some of the posts before hand… I already knew what points I wanted to make, but I almost never know how I want to support those points until I start writing. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out quite the way I wanted it to… For the final posts, I made one third of the outline, then just started writing without consulting the outline at all.
Right after writing the introduction, I saw a post on ProBlogger.net about how to build RSS readership… Darren’s point was to make people want to return by pointing out that there were going to be more great posts that people simply would not want to miss. Ironically, having a series of posts was one of the ways to increase this anticipation, so I began tracking my RSS subscriber numbers more closely. The results were great: Previous to writing the series, I had an all-time high RSS subscriber count at 41, and within 11 days, I had a new all-time high of 49… My weekly average before the series was 34, and now that average is at 42. It looks like I picked up 8 more subscribers, which really might not seem like much. Considering that this about a 19% increase in three weeks, though, this is very dramatic.
So, to those of you who subscribed while I was writing this series, welcome. 
Another trend that I noticed, traffic wise, is that some of my posts were submitted to StumbleUpon. To those who submitted articles, thank you. I did indeed notice, and I am appreciative.
I am also noticing more and more traffic coming through search engines, which means that I’m starting to be seen as an authority, according to Google.
Now, I’m going to say something that may surprise some people:
I am not going to concentrate on StumbleUpon or search engine traffic.
The reasons are of quality and laziness. In order to concentrate on SU and Google traffic, I have to change my posting style… I would need to write shorter posts that appeal to the first time visitors. There is nothing wrong with first time visitors… In fact, everybody who is reading this either was or is a first time visitor. Something about the way that I write caught your attention though… Perhaps you appreciate my bent monoliths of posts, and enjoy seeing the unexpected twists. I know that I enjoy them when I see them.
One thing that I have noticed, out of those who leave comments, is that each person tends to enjoy reading and inner reflection. This might not be true of everybody, and it’s unfair of me to generalize anybody, but this is the overall trend that I see. The people who leave comments are used to reading until the climax of a story, and enjoy the twists and turns that people who don’t read don’t enjoy. (For instance, where is Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings movies? He’s not there, because he’s an unexpected turn that doesn’t entice people who watch movies… but he certainly intrigues people who love to read.)
I don’t think that I could be a new reporter. They write away from the point, out of necessity. They start by explaining exactly what happened, then they move on to points that apply less and less to the main event. I’m too used to reading stories, and so that is how I write. I try to start by describing what the story is about, of course, but then I quickly move off to a tangent, and pull that tangent into the main idea.
And now that I have pulled back the curtain a little, explaining my process of writing, please feel free to read everybody else’s comments, and leave another comment, this time knowing the full story.
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