69 Life Lessons From Building A Blog

I learned a long time ago that I don’t do well with being told I am not capable of doing something. Tell me no and there is a damn good chance I will decide to prove you wrong.

When I choose to, I can be the most patient impatient person you have met. I am the guy who will figure out how to pull the moon out of the sky using a lever and brute strength.

It has led to some great stories, but they were not and are not always pleasant to tell/remember because life isn’t a movie.

P.S. I am not a big fan of list posts. Most are poorly done and or tied into the ridiculous blogosphere popularity contests. That is my way of saying you aren’t going to find 69 lessons here, maybe 983 or maybe 5 but it won’t be in list format.

Stick around or don’t.

Yeah, I am cranky and writing because if I don’t I’ll go looking for trouble and there is doubt we’ll find each other, we always do.

Sometimes shit happens and it doesn’t matter how smart, how talented or how worthy you are. Sometimes heroes fail and sometimes people fail to be heroes.

The Seesaw World Of Building A Blog

After I wrote that subhead I stopped writing and spent a few minutes thinking about whether I should make it the headline of this post.

Took my hands off of the keyboard and thought about whether it would lead more people to point and click their way into the blog and down the screen.

Thought about whether more would take the time to read and consume than if I left the current headline in place and thought ‘screw it, that headline is fine.’

I am not here to pull people in solely by headline. Granted if you don’t find a way to get them to click it doesn’t matter because it is a fundamental part of gaining readers.

But so is providing content that makes them want to stay and to return.

Fact is I like doing things my way and maybe, must maybe this is all tied into my not wanting to let people tell me I can’t build a blog my way.

The one truth I know about building a blog that is indisputable in my world is that if you don’t spend time commenting on other blogs your traffic will reflect it.

Ok, there are bloggers who prove that to be wrong, but for most of us it seems to bear some truth. I don’t comment the way I used to.

Sometimes I go on a tear and hit the old spots and some new. When I do that I see a spike, but otherwise things are kind of sleepy around here.

That is ok with me, I’d like more but right now I have to focus my time on other things and the extra I find goes into writing.

It is all tied into the seesaw world of building a blog, sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.

And don’t get me started about the tech stuff that comes up. I like tinkering but damn, sometimes it is really frustrating when I can’t get things to look or work as I want.

I ought to go look in the mirror and slap the face I see there.

That is because I am frustrated. Pissed off with some people who did me wrong and angry because I knew it would happen.

Frustrated because things went to hell and for a while I couldn’t stop the damn avalanche from burying me but it couldn’t stop me from digging myself out.

And I did, I dug and dug and pulled my ass out of the hole and climbed two-thirds of the way back up to where I was.

This time I am going to push past that spot for no other reason than just because.

And I am pissed off because I tasted life the way I wanted to taste it and figured out I was right about a bunch of things.

Right about gut feeling, instinct and intuition and that got ripped out of my hands during the damn avalanche.

You have to understand, I may not be the most graceful fellow around but I have a grip that makes a gorilla jealous and when I hold on it takes more than a little to pull it out of my grip.

Yet it happened.

Sometimes heroes fail and sometimes people fail to be heroes.Click To Tweet

I tell my kids that when things don’t go our way we can wallow or we can recover. We can react or we can act.

Now is just a reminder to listen to my own advice and to remember that past history isn’t proof of anything. It is proof that you had success and you had failures.

At best it is a guide we can use to navigate through the storms and find our way to port.

And blogging, well blogging is part of my navigation system. It is a tool I use to figure out where I am at, see if I need a course correction and remind myself that sometimes it is sunny during storms.

Are You Willing To Work For It?

Took my kid to see me play ball with the guys not for the purpose of showing off but to demonstrate what I mean by are you willing to work for it.

He saw me fight for position, box out, dive for balls and force the offense to change what they were doing because I wouldn’t give up.

I got beat on some plays and looked like an old man on some others.

But I made an impact. I made a difference.

And I did it through working harder than the other guy when I had to and working smarter whenever I could.

Now he understands what I mean when I say “are you willing to work for it?”

He saw a simple example of what happens when you apply yourself and proof that even if it doesn’t work every time you just keep going,

What he didn’t see was me popping a few Advil afterwards or the bruise on my arm and I am not going to show him either.

Dad, isn’t always Superman but he is not always a goat either.

You get out what you put into life.