The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

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What Does It Mean To Have 1000 Followers?

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Editor’s Note- This will show on both WordPress and Medium

Some of you know there is a version of this blog on Medium/Wordpress and follow me in both places. If you have tried to keep up than you also know I haven’t updated Medium in forever and that I have slowed down on the updates here.

You can blame that upon life having gotten busier and my having had to become more judicious about where I spend my time.

You can also say I have wrestled with which one provides the bigger bang for my buck so to speak. In concept Medium feels like it is the bigger platform based upon the 1000 followers it says I have there.

But that doesn’t mean that it really is bigger or that part or all of those 1000 are actively looking for my posts. Hell, most have probably forgotten I exist as it has been more than a year or two since I last updated there.

In concept some of you subscribe and or follow me in both places so you know that I haven’t fallen off of the earth but I really don’t know how big or small that number is.

I also know very few of you have reached out to ask about my silence. That is ok,  we’re all busy and I haven’t reached out to people I read on the regular to find out why they stopped production.

So don’t take that as a passive aggressive remark to encourage connection or comments. It is not, it is an observation.

I never stop writing, though I have stopped updating some of the places I used to be most active in. Writing is such a big part of who I am I don’t think I could give it up.

But I could absolutely take it all offline and or adjust as I have done.

What I can’t easily do is let go of this place because the mighty JackB is what kept me going during some very hard times. It is what kept me from losing my mind and losing hope.

It is a place that once had a very large and very active community. At one point it certainly was larger than the 1000 followers Medium says I have.

This was part of what I consider to be the golden age of blogging and that fills my heart with joy. So many good memories.

Part of why Medium didn’t take off for me is because I was spread too thin and you have to work to build your community. You have to nurture it and give it love/attention.

I didn’t do as good a job at that as I could have. If I had seen more activity there I might have focused on building and nurturing, but I didn’t.

There is so much content out there now I think we’re all swamped and overrun with beeps, buzzes, whistles and newsletters jockeying for our attention.

That impacts all of us, myself included.

Sometimes I haven’t published a post because I haven’t felt like the content merited being given that exposure.

But it never meant I wasn’t writing because that doesn’t happen. If you don’t keep your pencil sharp you grow rusty and so I keep going…always.

So I look at my time and consider what I have to say alongside of what I want to share and ask if I am writing something worth reading or doing something worth writing.

Hello, Is This Thing On?

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Some people used to complain about the frequency with which I updated this joint. They used to tell me I was driving people away because there was too much content.

I laugh at that sometimes because that was before Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok and the 10,000 other places that push out content. That was when comment sections were still active and people didn’t run around calling themselves content creators or influencers.

Now there’s so much going on that it is easy to feel like you are dealing with content shock and suffering from overload.

If you asked me which time I prefer I would go back. It was better, more authentic or so I felt and feel. More people sharing with less intent to become internet famous.

I like the additional tools and think some of what we have is better now, but we lost something as we gained othe items and I am not sure it is to our benefit.

Have to ponder that for a while.

Tooling Through Time & Space

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Sometimes I stumble across old posts like This Was Our Song and it takes me on a trip tooling through time and space. Reminds me of where I once was and where I stand now.

That was a pretty good post, I am proud of it.

It is almost 13 years to the day since I wrote it.

That is hard to believe, but I know it to be true. So much has changed and so much has evolved since then. I remember the man I once was and the man I am now.

There are big differences yet crossover between the two. Reminds me of how every time I think I have figured some things out life shows me that maybe I haven’t.

And yet in so many areas there is no question that I have.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I am crazy and confused. I wonder sometimes if wishes and wants have got me so damn mixed up that I can’t tell what is from what was. And then Mick sings that line using your heart and not your head and I wonder if he is talking to us.

That is one of my favorite sections, but not the favorite.

Might have to read and reread to determine what it is. Always interesting to me to read old material and see who I once was and to think about who I am.

But I said that above and maybe twice is enough or maybe not.

Near death experiences sometimes change you.

Chanukah 2025

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These are dark days that are filled with millions of lights being lit all around the world. The Jew haters are actively moving to try and place their thumbs upon us, but they fail to recognize the days of the shtetl Jew are over.

We are small in minority, but mighty in spirit and resilience.

We may bend, but we do not break.

The shooters at Bondi Beach were met by people of spirit and not just members of the tribe but others too. There is more good than bad, the light shines.

The Blog Isn’t Dead

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This blog isn’t dead, though it might feel like it. The blog isn’t dead even if the head writer almost died.

No, it is still going, still in a transformative state or so it seems.

This blog lives.

What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

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I updated the blog where I began my blogging career for the first time in months.

If you look at it you’ll see I took at a look at a post I thought about revisiting last January and a brief story I once started.

I’ll share the 20 some words I used there for those who don’t want to roam the net.

Eyes close, lips brush…time stops. Eyes open…empty room…Empty heart. Hope that echoes of the past become reality of the future. #loveburns

It got me thinking about an important question What Do You Spend Your Energy on?

What people, places, activities and things occupy you? Do they deserve your attention? Are they energy vampires or things that give back more than they take?

Do you walk away feeling better or worse than when you started?

The guy who started blogging wasn’t quite 35 and has now started the back half of his fifties. Life is so different and yet in some ways so similar.

But the one thing that has changed is my sense of time. I always hear it clicking and I am aware the endless runway isn’t endless any more.

So now I review who and what gets my attention.