If you are not a writer trying to publish a book, it may not occur to you.

The first thing a publisher wants to know is, What is your platform? In other words, how many followers do you have on your blog or social media.

For those of you who do not know, I have recently finished a writing degree and am transitioning into a writing career, and I need to get my name out there.

So if you wouldn’t mind, I am asking you friends to 1) follow my blog by subscribing using the Subscribe menu 2) follow me on Twitter @JeffreyAMays 3) jeffreyallenmays on IG and 4) repost and retweet things of mine—when you feel you can; I’m not asking anyone to get creepy.

Yes, this is a completely self-serving request. “Wouldn’t we all like to be reposted and retweeted,” you may be thinking. “What makes you so special?”

If you do not want to, of course you do not have to. But I’m just asking my friends who are willing to help me get my name out there in this way.

Thanks for considering my request.

I am on a low-carb diet trying to knock off 10 lbs. This used to mean no beer, but I remembered Michelob Ultra and I would sadly drink it when with friends, wishing I could enjoy the full flavor of regular craft beers.
Well I’ve just discovered that many other brewers have developed low-carb beers!
Meet “Slightly Mighty” by the Dogfish Head Brewing Company! Only 3.5 carbs, 95 calories, and 4% ABV.
While not as totally satisfying as 90-minute IPA or one of their other brews, this on is still far better than Mick Ultra.
So happy I’ve found this!
#dogfishheadbrewery
 @dogfishheadbeer 

Things that demonstrate that man is still human:

1. using utensils to eat real food. Or using tools of any sort
2. handwriting and arithmetic, and using them to write a letter to your
   mother or a friend, or calculate the perimeter of your backyard
3. locomotion by any organic medium
4. making pies
5. making music with hands, feet or breath, music that does not involve programming
6. reading words on a page
7. getting a hair cut
8. elimination
9. looking at a piece of good art, waiting there patiently until you
   begin to get it, having the lights come on, noticing things you didn’t
   see at first, feeling thanks in your bosom toward the artist, coming
   away with something new in your mind about human existence.
10. throwing a ball with a dog in an open field, even if the dog doesn’t bring the ball back, or throwing a shoe at a cat
11. drinking water. Or other real drinks like beer.
12. burning a candle, or burning anything for that matter
13. crying, trembling, hiding, greeting strangers on the sidewalk, wishing there was someone around, 
14. becoming familiar with the stars and trying to get your mind around
    them in a kind of embrace but ultimately finding you are unable to do
    so, yet feeling their greatness and your earth-boundedness
15. finding the harmony in your head to a note played by strange tone
    you hear somewhere but cant tell where its coming from; humming the note
    out loud, like the two-notes in a train whistle
16. drying off with a nice towel after a shower and shaving with some
    kind, any kind, of razor, it doesn’t matter what kind, and combing your
    hair into a nice part and facing others having tended your own garden,
    not just wandering into public like an animal
17. I’m sure there are others. Why not leave a ‘comment’ with your own additions?

Late at night I’m minding my own business, doing my own thing, and then Youtube says, “Hey, you watched Rosanna last night.”

I’m thinking, “Bloody algorithm. Leave me alone.”

It wont leave me alone.

“You wanna watchit again??”

It’s the “40 Years around the Sun” tour version. Brilliant and totally epic. Delicious no matter who you are. It’s video cocaine. And when Steve Lukather goes into his guitar solo toward the end it’s like we were submerged under water. A fish tank of Time and Space descend and it’s an expanding globe of wowism and holy-what is this! You are lost in sound and sight and nostalgia, because, well, it’s a great song from the 80’s.

And I’m thinking “Yezh I do, but no, because it’s too soon. I just watched it last night.”

And Youtube wins. SO I watch it again.

Then Youtube says, “You like Rosanna. You wanna listen to Hold The Line?”

And I’m thinkin’, I gotta move on. There’s a whole world of content out there. But OK, YES.

So I watch “Hold The Line”.

And then Youtube says, “You wanna watch “The rains down in Africa?” and I think, like a prison victim, like a crack addict, “OK. Yeah, I’ll watch Africa.”

And when I cannot take anymore, Youtube says, “You wanna watch Georgie Porgie“?

And I say, Oh, Hell No.

Today marks the first day of my new career as a writer, that is, not as a hobby or something to piddle around with on evenings and weekends. Today, liberated from a traditional American employment model, I now set out to discover what it means to be a professional writer.

It also means the resurrection of this blog and likely other blogs to come. So I restart this blog with a poem by Langston Hughes that someone shared with me some weeks ago. It is a fitting vessel to describe my new endeavor.

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Does it fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

—Langston Hughes