Sight Unseen

So okay, I've been kind of bitchy in my last couple of posts about other non-Threshold activities I've been engaging in, but I've been feeling kind of frustrated - about this blog and many, many other things - and unfairly taking it out on you, the mostly-hypothetical readers of this blog.
I guess that's a big part of the problem:  my readers, with a few notable exceptions - are almost entirely hypothetical.
In seven years of posting here I've never developed much of a following beyond a handful of friends and family members, and the following I do have isn't exactly what you'd call active and engaged.
And to be fair, that's entirely my fault for not posting things that are, er, actively engaging.
And to be even more fair, when I started this whole thing seven years ago, I didn't set out to try to build an active and engaged community of followers.  And it's a good thing, too, given how miserably I've failed in that task that I didn't actually set for myself.
But, despite the above, sometimes - clearly - it bothers me that things didn't turn out in such a way that an active and engaged community of followers developed on its own even without that intention.
Again, my fault for putting out page after page of largely uninteresting and totally unfocused content, but...well, I'm still bothered.
I don't think I can turn things around here at this point; Threshold is what it is.
Oh, and just to assure those even more hypothetical readers in your already hypothetical midst who think this me me announcing my "retirement from blogging," that's not what this is about, and I have no plans to abandon the little blog that couldn't.
So what is this about?
As is the apparent charter and mission of this blog, nothing, really.
Except that the whole point of this new Hub Pages thing is to actually attempt to pump some interesting and focused conten through the series of tubes that is the Internet, so, seriously, I'd appreciate it if you'd occasionally check my Hubs out.
Beyond the above hypothetical apology to the hypothetical people who were hypothetically hurt by my snarkiness, this post was actually inspired by something else that bothers me.
It is a little-known - or maybe entrely unknown - fact that I spend a fair amount of time drawing things that no one else will ever see.  (Not that many people see the things I draw and do share with the world...)
There are many reasons why these efforts end up being for my eyes only.  Sometimes it's something as simple as the fact that they just outright suck.  Sometimes it's a permission thing; I don't necessarily have the permission to post an image becuase the subject hasn't consented, or has specifically asked me not to.  Sometimes I use an image as a reference and I don't have the ability to seek out the consent of the copyright-holder.  (Note:  Pictures of celebrities and random models that I find online tend to result in this ethical stance getting glossed over, simply because of the ubiquity of the source image, or the public status of the subject.  It may not be a valid legal stance, and it may not make sense, but it's where I draw a line.) 
Sometimes it's...other reasons.  Nothing terribly nefarious or illegal or pornographic or terribly shocking, just...other reasons.
So why draw them in the first place if no one is ever going to see them?  Well, primarily for practice, and to test out different styles and techniques.  This would be why so many of them end up sucking, actually.
But, again, there are...other reasons.
And no, I'm not talking about generating spank material.  It's actually best not to speculate; it'd be a waste of time, as your brain (thankfully) doesn't work like mine does, and even if you figured it out, you'd discover that it's not all that interesting.
Anyway, normally this wouldn't bother me, but there are times when due to "other reasons" I don't feel willing and/or able to share a particular image with the wider world even though it turned out awesome.
Such has been the case recently.
So, yeah.  Bothered.
The good news is that in working on it I figured out some new techniques which I can apply to future images, which you will get to see and, if you're not Scott, fail to comment on...