The Modern Hermit: Divine Love, SEO, and 248 Pages of Hustle
Lede
A “hermit” sits under a banner of solitude while juggling a small empire of tabs, tasks, and platforms like peace is a spreadsheet setting.
Hermit Off Script
This caricature is painfully accurate: a hooded silhouette at the laptop, one speech bubble barking “More keywords!” while the other begs “Must learn Korean!” like enlightenment is hiding behind a plugin update. On the desk, the holy trinity of modern author life: the book, the brand, and the busywork. The sign says “The Modern Hermit”, but the posture says “content pipeline manager with a spiritual side-quest”. And that’s the joke, isn’t it? I write about divine love, surrender, and the quiet intelligence of the heart, then immediately crawl back into the market stall to negotiate with algorithms that cannot feel anything except “engagement”. I want depth, but I also want discoverability. I want mystery, but I also want metadata. I want a reader to slow down, yet I keep building systems that shout “faster” at everyone involved, including me. The caricature does not mock my face. It mocks my era: a world where a human tries to sell meaning through drop-down menus, and calls it progress. I am not a hermit. I am a monk with Wi-Fi, and the router owns the schedule.
P.S. So I pray, then I tag. I write about surrender, then I rename an image file. The feed wants speed; the soul wants silence.
What does not make sense
Calling it solitude while running multiple public storefronts like a one-person high street.
Writing about surrender while refreshing analytics as if devotion is a dashboard.
Asking readers to go deeper, then begging platforms to rank the work higher.
Building “simple” review culture while living inside a constant optimisation loop.
Treating love like an infinite thing, then packaging it into boxes that demand specs.
Sense check / The numbers
Waterstones lists “Just Love Her” as a paperback with 248 pages, published 09/07/2024, priced at GBP 10.99 – which is a lot of soul for something the internet will still judge in 3 seconds. [Waterstones].
The site says it has written 202 articles, and it also surfaces Goodreads stats showing 35 reviews and 3572 ratings with an average rating of 4.3 – proof that the “hermit” is, in fact, extremely online. [RazMihal.com].
Simple Book Reviews brands itself around speed: “one-minute takes” and helping readers choose in under 60 seconds – which is basically the opposite of a 248-page meditation. [SimpleBookReviews.com].
TheModernHermit.blog positions itself as “dry British satire with receipts” and claims new posts weekly – meaning the hermit has a publishing cadence like a small newsroom. [TheModernHermit.blog].
The sketch
Scene 1: The Prayer and the Keyword Panel: A hermit in a hoodie meditates. A laptop glows like an altar, flashing “SEO required”. Dialogue:
Hermit: “I seek silence.”
Algorithm: “Add 5 more keywords.”
Scene 2: The 248-Page Speedrun Panel: A reader holds a thick paperback. A timer hovers above it, screaming “60 seconds”. Dialogue:
Reader: “This feels… meaningful.”
Timer: “Decide. Now.”
Scene 3: The Award and the Gatekeeper Panel: A gold medal hangs in the air. A platform bouncer blocks the door with a clipboard titled “Metadata”. Dialogue:
Hermit: “It won. Let it be seen.”
Bouncer: “ISBN first. Then we talk.”
What to watch, not the show
Platform incentives that reward speed, not depth.
Search and recommendation systems that turn art into input fields.
Retail gatekeeping: visibility rented out in tiny slices.
The addiction to measurement: ratings, counts, rankings, cadence.
The quiet fear that meaning is not enough unless it performs.
The Hermit take
The work has a spine – the systems around it demand to become a circus. Write the truth, then automate the noise before it eats you.
Keep or toss
Keep Keep the spiritual core and the satire. Toss the reflex to turn every good thought into another optimisation chore.
Barnes and Noble (ebook): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/just-love-her-raz-mihal/1145977634
Better World Books (paperback): https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/just-love-her-a-poetic-and-inspirational-journey-into-love-s-divine-essence-9781068630002
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