Category: Writing

  • Matthew Groff Blog – The Best of 2023: An Introduction

    It’s that time of year again, when I post the “best of” of my blog for 2023.

    As in previous years, I am presenting the most popular posts in terms of views, and only the top 5. Sure, I have a few blogs that I put up that are dear to my heart, but I prefer this format as it showcases what the readers were most interested in.

    As such, this list owes its existence to you, the followers, viewers, and the friends of this blog. This year had the largest amount of views I had ever received. In fact, if you added together the previous five years together, that total would still be smaller than all the views for 2023.

    So, thank you, all of you, for spending your time on this little blog.

    And enjoy The Best of 2023!

  • Pretty Much My Last Blog Post of 2023

    I think that will be true. We are getting down to crunch time for the Holidays; the kid will be off from school, and soon the wife will be taking her Christmas vacation from work. Then we do have some traditions around the City we like to take part in, so the time to blog is growing short. And as such, this might be the last one I write for the year.

    Not that anyone is asking for this, and I am talking to the couple of you who stop by this blog, but I’ll post a Best of 2023, as well as some Holiday videos for Christmas and New Year’s. Once the kid and wife are back in school, I will resume the normal blogging schedule.

    As for 2023, it wasn’t a bad year…

    On the writing front, I submitted to 50+ magazines, and got accepted in one. I had planned on sending out to 100, and only then did I hope that maybe I’d get a bite. So, I’ll chalk that up as a win. I have three stories out there that I am waiting to hear on, so I guess there is still hope. The blog readership grew this year, which was unexpected to say the least. Most days, I feel like I am talking to myself in the dark, and lets be honest, that’s a rather true description. Yet, I averaged 5 readers a day in 2022, and in 2023 that grew to 20. I’m sure there are some Russian bots in those numbers, but some of you are real. Also, looking at the numbers, if you stop by this blog, you’re reading the Short Story Reviews, and not many of the other things I write about. (I don’t get any likes for my Tottenham posts, but I’m still going to write about my club.) I will say this about the reviews, which is that I have read more short stories this year than any other year of my life. I have discovered many new online lit journals which are great, and most importantly, I have read so many great new writers. I could do a better job about promoting these journals and writers, and perhaps that should be a goal for myself in 2024. I was hesitant in 2023 as I was writing and submitting myself, and I had this idea that it could be considered a conflict of interest. Then I reminded myself that no one knows who I am, no one cares, so I should just relax.

    On the other personal fronts; my wife is good, the kid is healthy and doing well in school, and life in the City isn’t too bad. There will always be things that I need to work on so I can be a better husband and father, and friend, and son, and brother. I’ll still be pulling for the Dallas Cowboys to win the Super Bowl this year, and I would be happy with Tottenham just qualifying for the Champions League. Cubs are the Cubs, so I’ll be happy with a winning season. It would be good if I got back to sketching more, and maybe I should complete a book or some art project in 2024. Who knows…

    But, in the end, I would like to say thank you to the 20 of you, if you are real, who look at this thing each day. You do validate my existence, and that’s a pretty nice thing to do for someone. Especially when it’s a middle-aged guy still trying to figure things out and expressing… opinions about stuff. Anyway, I appreciate it.

    Have a good Holidays and I’ll talk to you soon.

  • The 7 Habits of People Who Are Complete Failures, Or Who Stopped Eating Sugar

    So, I made a mistake recently by reading a click-bait story that was on my Google News feed about the 8 habits of successful people, or some shit. I know it was a listicle about habits of certain types of people because my news feed is now inundated with these types of articles…

    8 Habits of Caring Spouses

    10 Signs of Above Average Kids

    23 Annoying Things Super Rich People Never Do

    1001 Words Well Adjusted Emotionally Solvent Adults Always Say

    And then I began to notice that some of the good habits of happy and successful people happened to also be the bad habits of sad, lonely and failure people…

    Did you know that getting enough sleep is good, unless you sleep too much?

    Then it’s bad to stay up late, unless you are staying up late to read and do self-wellness shit.

    Taking the time to enjoy good food is a good habit, while enjoying food too much can be bad.

    Don’t get me started about the gym! On the whole, it’s good to go to the gym, unless you obsess about body image by going to the gym too much.

    And you know, they never site their sources for this information. Did the Mayo Clinic do a 20-year research study on the habits of people who always are positive in the morning? Is that where this information is coming from. Or is this just some dude (Or AI) coming up with click-bait to fill up their site with content?

    It’s content; I know it’s content.

  • ODDS and ENDS: My Nose, My Teams, and My Goodness

    (Out you pixies go!)

    So, something has happened to my nose of late. My right nostril is completely clogged up, and won’t budge. I don’t feel sick, so I don’t think it’s a cold, but I am totally congested. I went out and bought a couple of different nasal sprays, which do work like magic and open things up, but a few hours later, everything closes up again. I thought it was the heat being on in the building and the really dry air. I turned the shower on and steamed up the bathroom, and that seemed to work, yet again it only gave temporary relief. This is very disconcerting, as I feel out of breath all the time; like I am slowly being suffocated. There’s no punchline here as I think I am slowly dying.

    Since Maddison got injured, Tottenham has been playing awful. They lost three in a row, and then had a glimmer of a match when the eeked out a draw in Man City. But yesterday, Hotspur lost again, and I have this awful feeling that the season is slipping away. I’m trying not to be dramatic as there is a lot of football left to be played in the season, but I don’t think I am alone when I say that I really need Spurs to finish in the top four and get back in the Champions League. Now the Dallas Cowboys seem to be doing better. They finally beat a team with a winning record! And Sunday, they will play the Eagles in Dallas, and we’ll see how good the Cowboys really are. It’s a good sports weekend.

    The year is almost over. I think I might need to start putting my “Best Of…” lists together.

  • Day Two with a Sick Kid (Random Stuff)

    To answer the question from yesterday’s blog, yes I am using my sick kid to procrastinate. Half the day has gone by, and only now am I getting around to do the stuff I need to do.

    I started the day on the right foot, though. I was up on time, and sat down on the couch and got about twenty good minutes writing in my journal. I hashed out all the stuff that had happened yesterday; sick kid, pediatrician visit, lack of production, and also I got stuck in a death spiral of thinking about all the mistakes I made five years ago, and how much of an idiot I was  and why I just can’t let that shit go, you know.

    Then the kid got up. She didn’t look good; low fever, headache, sick to her stomach. We sent her back to bed with some children’s Tylenol. In the quiet two hours that followed, I could have got some work done, but again, I found myself on my phone. I did the dishes, but honestly, that was another delay tactic on my behalf.

    A minute ago, we sat down and did her homework together. I mean, I was sitting next to her while she did it. It was more like overseeing homework. If she wanted some screen time, then I said she needed to get the majority of her work done, which she did. We only have to do thirty minutes of reading, and I intend to read the latest New Yorker short story.

    But I want to make chicken stock, so I have the base to make potato leek soup for dinner tonight. And I haven’t sketched in a while, so it would be nice to tackle that today was well. And that one flash story got rejected from another magazine – that would be the piece that I have been trying to rewrite for a week now. Yeah, I think this is the sign that I need to do the rewrite.

    Let’s see how much I can get done.