Writing

My daughter asked me to tell her about every girlfriend I have ever had and to focus on the ones who broke my heart.

I laughed and told her I didn’t know how many girlfriends I have had nor did I have any idea how many had broken my heart.

Confession: I lied about some of those things.

I have a general idea about how many girlfriends I have had and I know who broke my heart and who didn’t but she doesn’t need to know those things right now.

Maybe later, maybe never.

At just a few minutes before bedtime I wasn’t interested in getting into a conversation that I knew would send her mind racing off to a million other questions that would keep her from falling asleep.

There are boundaries in blogging and boundaries in general storytelling.

Stop Worrying About Your Readers

Once when I was in sales another salesmen told me he didn’t understand why I didn’t adopt a “customer is always right” approach and suggested I could sell more if I gave them what they wanted and didn’t worry about what they needed.

If my daughter were older and I felt like being transparent with her about some of my dating history I would tell her that some of the women I dated got what they wanted to hear because it got me what I needed.

It is not something I am proud of but when I was a younger man I didn’t always date the woman I needed and so I went after the one I wanted.

Those relationships rarely lasted very long because I never let myself open up to get what I really needed and consequently I just got what I wanted.

As you might imagine the few who broke old Jack’s heart covered both what I wanted and what I needed. If I opened myself up to possibility I often stumbled into opportunity.

Sometimes that led to heartbreak but it always led to growth too.

I think somewhere in between or after heartbreak and lots of living I figured out that I was always happier when I focused on what I needed and not what I wanted.

Can’t say when I adopted that approach as a sales technique but I found it to be effective because if I understood what the customer needed I could serve them better as a trusted advisor than a salesman who said yes to whatever they asked.

And that is part of why I stopped worrying about what my readers need.

Niche Bloggers, Cars & Tech

My car is 15 years old and I am about ready to replace it.

Sometimes I wonder how some bloggers get gigs where they are given a car to drive for a while.

I know the car manufacturers hope it leads to a post in which the blogger praises the car and recommends it to their readers.

And I know bloggers who have done it but I have never reached out and asked them for details or help. Heck, in eleven years of blogging I have spoken to two PR folks from two different car companies but it never led to being given a car to drive or any of the experiences other bloggers have done.

The obvious response to this is to ask why I haven’t done more to try and change this. If my kids approached me about a similar situation I’d ask them if it made sense to sit idly by and hope that someone approached them or if it made more sense to be proactive in their approach.

Might be nice to get a car I am thinking about buying for a weekend in exchange for a post. Would make it easier to figure out what I want, now wouldn’t it.

And then I think about all of the cool tech that is out there and how I could be one of the bloggers that gets a chance to use and review it.

Might be nice to get my hands on some of that tech and write about it. Might offer a chance to carve out a new role and maybe even a cool career.

Maybe I should rethink my approach and become a niche blogger.

Why I Don’t Worry About My Readers

There are more than 983,883,993 blogs out there or at least that is what it feels like to me.

I do my best not to succumb to blog envy and get irritated by those that are more successful but provide inferior content.

Can’t say that I am always successful but most of the time I am. And most of the time I am happiest when I just write from my heart and share whatever comes from my head…within limits of course.

I could adjust my focus and spend my time trying to give people what they want. I could focus on my stats and write solely about the biggest traffic generators.

I could spend more time trying to drive traffic by writing about current events including the controversial stuff like religion and marriage and be confident that it would increase the number of readers here.

I know that it works because I have done it but it is just not as interesting to me as it used to be.

What I write about are the things that touch me now. Does that mean I still giving people what they need and not what they want?

Probably not, but no one has to pay to read this so those of you who are hanging out are here because you choose and or want to be.

And that is why I don’t worry about my readers. You’ll keep coming as long as it serves you and the best way to serve you is for me to be engaged in my writing.

I think that is a win-win.

What about you?

I don’t know about you but I am a learn-by-doing kind of guy. If I watch you do something a few times I’ll probably pick it up, but I am rarely satisfied unless I try doing it myself.

Don’t know if it is because of an independent streak that makes me prefer not to rely upon others or an inquisitive nature that pushes me to find out how things work and to explore what happens when I push the envelope.

Whatever it is that combination is probably to blame for the number of times I have blown up the blog or created issues for myself by messing around with plugins and design without always knowing what I was doing.

It is definitely played a significant role in my finding a way to accidentally turn off the RSS feed here for a significant chunk of time.

Or in other words it was an excellent way to try and kill some of the traffic here.

Had it not been for messages from some of the readers who wondered if I had finally given on blogging I still might not be aware that technical difficulties were impacting things here.

Another Social Media Experiment

In an effort to avoid taking that kind of hit again I am going to request that you consider subscribing to the blog. You can do so by using the subscribe bar that lies under the word discussion or by clicking on the large link in bold below:

Never miss one of my posts by subscribing to me on Feedio.

There is no obligation to do so nor any promise of rewards for doing so other than the opportunity to stay in the know about what is going on here.

If that works for you that is great and if it doesn’t that is cool too. I have told more than a few people no one is obligated to read anything I write nor am I obligated to explain your misunderstanding anything I have written.

Why Are You Grumpy Jack?

I am glad you asked. I am irritated with the misbehavior, misunderstanding, mischaracterization and mishegoss that some people have forced me to deal with.

I am irritated with some people trying to apply their perspectives, fear and uncertainty upon me.

I am frustrated with having to deal with a bunch of unnecessary crap from people who think they have more influence over my choices and decisions than they do.

That being said I follow the same advice I give my children as outlined in the Emerson quote above.

Confession: A few hours ago circumstances proved to me that I am indeed not 20 anymore.

A disagreement with someone infuriated me and there was a moment where the idea of tearing the doors off of the hinges and putting my fist through every wall I could find sounded like a good idea.

The difference between then and now was I took a deep breath and thought about a saying I read on Pinterest, Not My Monkeys, Not My Circus.

And then I thought about that Emerson quote above and decided it was my choice to give them the power to irk me and I could take it back.

Does that mean I wasn’t angry or hurt anymore?

No, because I was but I didn’t have to react or do anything stupid.

Instead, I chose to set it aside and think about what bothered me about it and then I could decide if it merited more attention.

Why Do People Follow You On Social Media?

The obvious reasons are because you educate, inform and or entertain them.

There are lots of different ways to do that but this post isn’t about any one of them. This post is just me sharing some thoughts and ideas with you.

It is me saying that sometimes I think the misunderstandings between people occur because of a communication breakdown.

Sometimes we get frustrated because we feel like our words are intentionally twisted or because we feel like we have been lied to.

I tend to think the truth might lie somewhere in between those two points and that maybe if the parties got a chance to really flesh things out they come to a place where they understood each other.

That might not mean they ever agree but they would at least feel like they had been heard. Sometimes that is all people really need.

The more I read online the more I think the reason some of us are out here writing is because it is the only place we feel like we are heard.

Did I mention:

Never miss one of my posts by subscribing to me on Feedio.

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. ”
― Joss Whedon

“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

One of the old timers asked why I don’t update my blog seven days a week anymore and told me they wondered who I was blogging for.

“Nobody comments on blogs anymore and if you are not getting any comments who are you blogging for?”

I didn’t have to think about my answer because I knew the gut response is always the same but I decided to take a moment to try and dig deeper to see if there was more than the I write first for me and then for you.

So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try to dig around in the archives to see how many times I have addressed the question and to try to figure out how much has changed.

I stumbled onto The Sloppy Kisser and knew it had to be included because it is a story and it wasn’t me airing out my thoughts about this and that.

Flipped and clicked my way over to What I See- Part One and What I See Five Years Later and realized I have to write part 3.

Why?

Because that will provide a quick snapshot of life in 2005, 2010 and 2015.

When I read the first two parts I smile because I remember the man I was for both of them and recognize I am not quite him anymore.

Too much has happened, too many major changes have led to an evolution that would have taken place anyway but is probably more significant than it might have otherwise been.

This time in life is all about who I am on the way to becoming and not who I once was.

Life Changes Are A Writer’s Best Friend

If you want to tell a good story that is entertaining, educational and informative then you are going to want to get up close and comfortable with life changes.

They don’t have to be good changes any more than they have to be painful ones because both are useful.

Real life experiences do more than provide credibility, they help you paint a better picture for the readers.

When my son tells me he is nervous about entering school or when my daughter gives me a list of places she is willing to move to and those she isn’t I can smile and say I understand.

I know all about children and changes and can write about it from multiple perspectives.

Ask me to talk about what it is like to lose your job and fight to keep things afloat and I can tell you about it at length.

I bought a home and felt like I owned a castle and then when things went to hell knew the time had come to sell it because if I didn’t I wouldn’t get a dime out of it and all I had worked so hard for would be taken.

Those experiences are weighed against the joy and laughter of life, measured in small increments called moments in time.

Most possessions have become of limited interest to me, except for the few have morphed from ordinary into extraordinary.

Blogging at times is a funny. unpredictable and unreliable beast.

The posts you are most proud of because they are finely crafted examples of your finest writing are often ignored, passed over and overlooked.

Replaced by silly tales about how to hard boil eggs or stories about how you tore your pants and spilled coffee on our shirt.

Laughed at by stories of the time you tried to change a diaper and were peed on by a baby whose bladder couldn’t possibly hold that much liquid but somehow did.

My stories about supermarket mayhem, fist fights with Santa Claus and drunk and horny clowns always out perform the posts that I think display the best examples of my writing abilities.

It used to bother me because I was worried that I was developing a brand that was too narrow in its focus but once I took a hard look at it things changed.

Why?

Because I am a writer and a good writer is required to make people feel something.

Those posts did their jobs and they helped provide opportunity and reason to continue.

They also helped build a foundation for writing other posts that are not necessarily based upon stories that have the traditional beginning, middle and end but are more…abstract in nature.

If I had any particular criticism of the abstract it is that they are less likely to inspire comments than some of the others.

Why You Have To Keep Writing

The reason why you have to keep writing and the reason I keep going is because I can’t imagine not doing it.

But it is also because of the unpredictability of it all. I never know for certain what people will love, like or hate so I keep swinging.

I like swinging for the fences but I never forget that sometimes a post that fails may still contain some gold within.

You never know when you might coin a phrase or parse together a few sentences that are both magical and magnificent.

That alone is worth it to me.

What about you?