I’ll readily confess that when Google accused me of being a whore I thought about shutting this place down.
The accusation pissed me off because this place has never been about selling out ads, sponsorships or trying to turn it into my primary source of income.
Well, that is not entirely true, I have had hopes it would lead to a monster book deal or that some patron of the arts decided they would pay old Jack Steiner to do nothing but write all day long.
But there was never a focus on trying to convince every brand out there to let me promote their products for them.
Anyhoo, the idea behind shutting down was to tell Google STFU and remember to try not to be evil but the reality is they wouldn’t have noticed if I was gone.
It would have been meaningless and I would have been just one more blogger who hung up their keyboard.
Why You Can’t Shut Your Blog Down
I couldn’t shut this down because I hate the idea of losing chunks of history.
Posts like My Daughter’s Favorite Book, I Had A Dream and The Search For Absolution are just a few of those that have meaning for me.
It would be a shame to lose them and something I would regret doing and given I teach my children not to make big decisions when angry it would be hypocritical for me to ignore my own advice.
Blogging is harder for me than it used to be and I can’t figure out why.
Can’t decide if it is because the engagement is lower than ever or if I am pulled in too many different directions.
It is not because it is hard to write because the words come when I call and given the right mood I can pump out 10,000 words in a hurry.
Might be that I am not convinced the quality is living up to the standard I want or maybe it is all of these things.
Regardless of it being tougher than it once was, I am still having fun and that is a significant part of why I won’t board it up and shut it down.
But there is no doubt the primary reason is there is too much life tied up and invested in this place.
It is my personal Hall of Records and the place I sometimes use as my Fortress Of Solitude.
And it is worth mentioning I have always thought I need to put in at least 20-25 years before I can truly think of giving it up.
Since I am more than halfway to 25 it is not inconceivable (and I do know what that word means) that I might just go for it and see what happens.
Got something like 10,000 posts now, no reason not to double or quadruple it.
Stick around and lets see what happens/
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Mitch Mitchell October 20, 2016 at 4:55 pm
Dude! First, I hope you find out from them what the issue is they have with your blog.
Second, just because the big G gets mad at you doesn’t mean you quit. It just means you find other ways of promoting your stuff (aka, Twitter) and move on from there. If you were selling products from here that depended on traffic then I’d get it.
Third, I’d probably worry more about the mobile speed thing because that’s really what’s going to impact blogs in the long run.
Fourth… just keep writing! 🙂
Jack Steiner October 21, 2016 at 5:42 am
Hi Mitch,
You are right on all accounts. I haven’t even taken time to see how much traffic finds me through Google so I can’t say it is the biggest or most significant source of traffic.
Mostly I am just tired so picking through all these links and searching for the needle is tedious.
But I won’t go, too damn stubborn. 🙂
Guess I better start checking out my mobile.
Kenya G. Johnson October 18, 2016 at 4:05 am
I know we don’t engage a lot but I am a subscriber. You are on my list of people who IF they quit, it’s going to make me stumble. So don’t quit. You’re like a pedestal blogger. Just hanging in there like the rest of us, you support more than you can imagine.
Jack Steiner October 18, 2016 at 2:08 pm
Hi Kenya,
That is very sweet and I appreciate your words more than you know. I am a grumpy old man sometimes and I am not particularly tolerant of some things like the Google slap.
But I love to write and it would be a shame to lose everything here over something stupid, so I expect you’ll be bored with my writing long before I actually give up. 😉