Writing

I never read the book, but I watched the movie and that line above is perfection.

Maybe it is because it is easy for me to relate to on a personal level or maybe it is because I enjoy simple writing that tells a story.

Those of you have been here for all, most or much of the journey know that I do this because I am compelled to write and not because I hope this will lead to a book deal, brand ambassadorship or fame.

If any or all of those things come because of blogging I’ll be very pleased but they won’t ever be the reason I stop or continue to blog.

I’m here because I am like the writing Captain Ahab but instead of a white whale I am chasing a great story or maybe it is more accurate to say I am chasing after the ability to tell a great story.

If the devil showed up and offered to exchange my soul for the ability to become a master storyteller I would be in big trouble because that is the sort of deal that I might actually consider.

But mostly because it would make one hell of a story.

Think for a moment how glorious it would be to tell the tale of the time Jack beat the devil at negotiating and how when the devil tried to get him back, Jack punched the horny dude in the nose and stabbed him in the ass with a pitchfork.

I may have grown up in Encino, but I come from the north side of the boulevard, no pussies allowed.

It Is What A Blog Should Be

Ask me what I want out of this experience and I’ll tell you that in addition to becoming one of the great storytellers I’d be happy to have people describe this joint as being what a blog should be.

Ask me why I about that and I’ll you how I sat in the corner of a coffee shop and listened to a group of twenty-somethings talk about what a blog should be.

Some of their conversation made me laugh and some of it made me feel really…old.

It is funny because even though I kid around about feeling like an old man most of the time I really don’t. I am always surprised by the reflection in the mirror.

Sometimes it is because I don’t particularly like what I see and sometimes it is because I see echoes of the guy I expect to stare back at me.

One of them kept telling the others about how important his blogs were and shouting about how he should be the top writer because he wrote his blogs faster than the other.

Initially, it made me smile because I understand the whole multiple blog thing and have a certain respect for those who maintain more than one.

But then I realized he was doing something that makes old Jack Steiner crazy. He was substituting the word blogs for posts.

In the grand scheme of things this is not a big deal but it is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

If you ate three slices of pie you wouldn’t say you ate three pies unless you really ate three pies in which case you ought to get off of your ass and start running, I like my readers to enjoy the benefits of good health.

But I digress.

The Tools Of A Blogger

My favorite doppleganger wrote a quick post about how to make the most of our time.

It is certainly not his best work but it interested me because I have been thinking about what tools a blogger must have and which ones should be considered optional.

I picked up a single license for Social Warfare the other day because I kept hearing good things about it and the benefits it offers.

Disclosure: There is no affiliate link there, in fact there is no link at all.  That is not because I am irritated or unhappy with them but because I haven’t signed up for the affiliate program yet.

Fact is I have spent far less time with affiliate and monetization programs this year than probably any other time in my blogging career.

There is no particular reason for that other than I am just ridiculously busy and I spend more time roaming the plains and places of my world than I do in the blogosphere.

That lack of time in the blogosphere is the primary reason why the numbers here have dropped again. I don’t comment very often on other blogs and I don’t update with the same frequency as I once did.

Don’t worry. I am not going to quit blogging. I am just focused in other places, but I can guarantee I’ll keep writing and that sometimes I’ll fill these pages with more than you can keep up with.

This is all tied into how and why I have lasted for as long as I have. I march to the beat of a drummer who has no rhythm but that dude’s beat still makes me dance and that keeps me happy.

Happy is probably the primary tool a blogger needs. Happy keeps you coming back to the keyboard.

It is why I didn’t lose my mind when the blog blew up today and I had limited time to fix it. I am/was happy so it was important to me to take a deep breath and figure out how to fix it.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

It is getting late and soon I shall have to find my pillow and answer the call of the snore.

But before I go I’ll share another thought, even though I am far from hanging up my keyboard I am thinking very seriously about what kind of blogger I am and what kind I want to be.

Don’t know that it matters or if I have to define it for anyone other than myself, but I am thinking about it.

See you in the comments…maybe.

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