Midnight approaches and I hear voices of authority reminding me that nothing good happens after midnight and though they mean well all I can do is shake my head.
Shake my head because experience has taught me some of the greatest moments and memories of my life were created after midnight.
Yeah I know The witching hour is a time when your parents suggested that people of ill repute were anxiously awaiting your arrival so that they could engage you in the kind of trouble that you never wanted to be a part of.
And while I would hate to say your parents stretched the truth I would also say the validity of their statements falls somewhere close to the people who told you that blogging would make you rich.
987 Reasons Why Monetizing Your Blog Makes You Sexier
Every now and then I read a bunch of the social media expert posts and think about how much fun I could have if I wanted to peddle their particular brand of snake oil.
It makes me want to write, produce and star in my own infomercials in which I try to sell you a pill that makes weight melt right off of you, restores your hair line and fixes your crooked teeth.
Of course I wouldn’t do any of those things without offering it to you for the low, low price of only $19.99.
Maybe it is coincidence that When The Levee Breaks is playing now because that last line about $19.99 is ridiculous. Hell if I am going to try to charge you for my services I am going to do it for a hell of a lot more than twenty bucks, but that is a separate issue.
Remember in Where Bloggers Fear To Tread I spoke a bit about Steiner the minor and the middle school madness he is going through?
Well one of the things that I do in my role as dear old dad is try to teach him some basic tips and tricks for building relationships with people.
Sometimes that involves using the heavy bag to teach him how to throw a right and snap the elbow and sometimes it is far simpler like trying to teach him how to engage with words.
In the wild and woolly blogosphere I sometimes use audioposts to try and make that happen. Â Adding your real voice can be an effective way to help people start to see you as a real person.
Earlier today I stumbled on an old favorite called Do You Have An Accent?
If you don’t feel like clicking the link to read it you can always use the button below to listen to me speak and then you can decide for yourself if I have an accent.
I like teasing the Shmata Queen about sounding more Texan than she does, but you won’t hear any of that drawl in the post below.
Blogging Tricks Any One Can Use
Did I mention I recorded that post on March 9, 2012?
Yeah, that sucker is almost precisely three years old and I was able to use it again. I like being able to repurpose my content.
Ask my kids and they’ll tell you I try to teach them to work smarter and not harder. They’ll also tell you working smarter doesn’t mean I advocate taking short cuts unless you are certain it won’t create more work.
That is a lesson I learned the hard way.
I am fast on my feet and have always been a quick study and good at getting things done. Sometimes that has led me to bite off more than I could chew but I never saw it that way because I always knew I would figure out a way to get it done.
And I did, but it wasn’t always as good as it could have been and I realized that I was selling myself short.
People got quality work but the not the quality work they could have had and sometimes the short cut meant that I had to do something twice because it wasn’t done the right way the first time.
Sometimes the only way to be successful is to do the work or to get lucky but luck is never guaranteed so you might as well do the work.
Speaking Of Work
Speaking of work I have been tooling around with linking New Year’s Eve, My Stairway To Heaven and An Uncertain Certainty.
Been thinking about whether I’ll turn them into a larger story that I’ll self publish, but haven’t decided yet.
Some of that is because I have been mulling over whether to create one large piece or several smaller using those pieces and some of the posts in The Fifty Posts You Didn’t Read On New Year’s Eve.
Anyway thinking about things has never proven to be an effective way to get them done. I can’t decide if it is as bad or worse than taking short cuts that create little messes that have to be cleaned up.
But the witching hour isn’t for figuring out whether short cuts or analysis are your best option or at least on this particular night it is not.
So in a moment I’ll this tale of treachery and treason on the high seas of social media knowing that this post got more clicks because the headline talked about blogging and money and not because people are dying to read the famous writer Jack Steiner.
But that may yet change, oh yes, it might.
If ever there was a day when I wondered if a career in misanthropy would have been the smarter choice today would be that day.