Some tell me that I need to spend more time working on my headlines. They say it is a big mistake not to pay attention to them and that I’ll lose readers if I don’t. Others tell me that I am not working hard enough on my S.E.O. and that could compensate for my not focusing on headlines.
They may both be right and maybe I am working harder than I need to. Or maybe I am not. Maybe I am doing exactly what needs to be done to turn this blog into the vehicle that drives me to my next destination.
I try to remind myself that much of the joy lies in the journey and not just the destination. That helps me look at this as fun and not work.
Where I Have Been
This journey is something that I started 7.5 years ago. I didn’t know anything about blogs or blogging. Ok, that is not entirely accurate I knew that some people used a Weblog to write stuff in. But old Jack is the guy who used to hate being forced to keep a journal in school so I sure wasn’t going to do this voluntarily.
Yet, I did it. On a lazy day in May I went to Blogspot and set up a Blogger account. Sat down and wrote some posts that are truly awful. Some of them are so bad that I dread seeing them but I keep them there. I don’t delete them because they help provide a guide to where I was and sometimes that is good to know.
I can tell you the same thing that a million bloggers say: I didn’t know this would be fun. I didn’t know that my love for writing had gotten lost or that blogging would restore it to me. I didn’t know that I would make friends, find work or capture moments in time here.
But I did and I do.
And because of that I decided to become more serious about some things. I moved to a self-hosted blog on WordPress. I spent time working on it. Took time to read and educate myself about things that would help and then did the best that I could to apply that knowledge here.
Where I Am Going
If you are among the 17 long time readers you have watched the transitions and growth. You have seen me work on new themes and witnessed my breaking my blog. You have hiked alongside and seen me sweat through some of the repairs. You may not have seen my face but if the words worked you read my smile.
You, the long time readers recognize my fiction. You know that anything that is labeled Fragments of Fiction is just that. You know that I didn’t really get arrested for that salami incident because it never happened.
Those little bites of fiction are part of how I try to keep my writing/storytelling skills sharp. They’re important to me because it is time for me to push harder to write and publish a book.
It is time for me to push harder to make the blog look nicer. I don’t want something that looks overly slick because they become sterile but I don’t want something that looks like it was created by a child either. So I am going to keep pushing, reading and practicing.
Some of that may happen behind the scenes but some of it will happen out in the open. There is a lot more to come and a lot more to say but I need to save something for later.
Questions for you
Do you have goals for your blog and what are you doing to make them happen?
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P.S. Thanks so much for going with the standard WP commenting system, Jack. It is ever so much better for the commenter. And, of course, CommentLuv is much appreciated as well.
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