Blogging

I used to know so much more about blogging and the world surrounding it. I used to be able to look at things like the screenshot below and know what was going on.

Now I ask myself if this is just the Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa rolling through my site or if someone is scraping my content for their own use.

I used to see more of that happening than I see today but I can’t say if it changed because of the world or because of what I have been doing.

There were moments when I caught people doing it and I would drop in little “poison pills” in the content to see if they were reading.

Things like “you’re reading stolen content and if you want to support the real writer do this and XYZ.”

It worked a few times, maybe more than a few, I don’t remember. Been a long while since I remember any of that going on, might be more than 10 years.

Time keeps moving and priorities change, I am obviously still writing but not like I once did so I ask myself if there is motivation to figure out what is happening here.

And if not, well should that be a sign or is the sign that I am posting about this. Does that mean the curiosity is driving me for more details.

Does that mean the flame still flickers?

Maybe.

Updates, we have updates for you though we cannot say if you will find them meaningful or important.

We’ll start with the continued question about what to do with this particular blog from a time and financial perspective.

Clearly this doesn’t get updated as often as it once did and the burning question has been is it because of lack of interest or a time perspective.

The answer there probably has more to with time as in I do not have as much as I once did. That is a good thing for on the whole but less good for building and maintaining a readership.

But let’s be honest there is so much content out there we have left the place where could just throw stuff up and expect readers to flock to you.

If you are established you might be able to keep some of the long time folks around by posting occasionally but you still need something meaningful for them to read.

That brings up the financial component because this place is self hosted and it costs more than a couple of bucks to keep running. It is not so costly that I can’t keep it going which is why you have seen it stay live, but I do wonder if I am paying more than I ought to given its current state.

So I go back and forth about whether I ought to move to something that costs less or is free. Been more than a decade since I wasn’t self hosted.

What Purpose Does It Serve?

I am not prepared to just shut it down but I am thinking about going to through the posts and culling the weaker material. How long will that take and what is involved is a reasonable question to ask.

I don’t have those answers yet.

I never tried to be an influencer or a brand ambassador but I did take paid opportunities when they presented themselves. Some of those were pretty good, but it has been years since any of that took place here and that is not the focus.

Can’t say that means I wouldn’t accept anything if it was presented but I am not sure that anyone would be real interested in that now.

So the purpose of this place seems to be somewhere I can write semi anonymously and that is worth something to me.

That is enough to keep this going in some form, just have to decide what that looks like.

The idea was for your host to go on a short walkabout and then come back in time to write a post wrapping up the year and then another talking about ’24 because that was going to launch something special.

The launch of something special happened outside of here and it came with several fits, starts, challenges and opportunities.

Color me surprised, sarcasm intended that things didn’t go as planned and that it has taken about five weeks for me to reappear.

Clearly, I haven’t figured out what to do with this place and how to do it. Is it dying or is it just going through an evolution.

The answer is forthcoming but I can’t tell you if that is something we’ll know in a week, month or year.

The Wheels Keep Turning

Figure at some point I’ll have another conversation with the Shmata Queen about this and get her thoughts.

The last time we saw each other in person there was too much going on to dig into it and it didn’t happen.

There have been six million conversations in between so there is truth in saying if it was important it could have been brought up already.

Not that it matters because the ultimate decision rests with me regardless so it is up to me to determine what I want to do and how to do it.

So call that lack of conversation a silly excuse for not taking time to figure it out.  The biggest question I need to answer is what kind of cadence do I wish to hold here.

Do I want to go back to writing daily or updating a couple of times a week. Do I want to try and build the traffic back up again or use this for as a writing sandbox to play in.

I am not sure yet and that is part of why I didn’t put question marks at the end of the previous two sentences.

Can’t really say they are questions any more than I can say they are comments. It is really me thinking out loud and I am ok with that.

Sometimes you don’t need an immediate answer because what is more important is taking time to consider your options, possible, likely and probable.

Think I missed my blogiversary, been at it for 20 years though I think I have been self-hosted for about 12.

Probably should take the time to put something more elegant and well-thought-out together.

Probably should look at my About Me page and consider updating it or maybe updating some of the links to more recent work.

Twenty years, it is a lifetime and a half in this industry. Very few stick around for this long.

Kind of wild to think that something I picked up on a whim is still going.