I’ve been away from writing on purpose because I was kind of in conflict over what I was doing with the blog. I suddenly figured it out, and then decided on, or close to, my birthday I would start again now that I had cleared my head and my Birthday was this week.
I used to work heavily with social media in my job before retiring, and I have an understanding of how it works and what it now has evolved into. It may be an “old person” thing, but I see how controlling it is, plus, I’ve become a tad, shall we call it, “rebellious” over how much selling has overtaken social media, and I roll into that category podcasts, YouTube, you name it. In my working life, I came from advertising, sales, marketing, and sponsorship. I get all of it. As a result, maybe I am more skeptical and cynical when listening to a podcast and I hear the podcaster talking about the importance of something perhaps health-related or something and they go “here’s what I take/do and oh-by-the-way, use my coupon code”………what? Suddenly I pump the brakes……is this sincere or pure sales-sponsorship for a commission? I’ve been there. I once endorsed sunglasses for a broadcast I was doing. In this case, they were really outstanding,and I and my broadcast partner became believers in the brand but it only came AFTER the account was sold to the brand and we were then told we would do this as part of our job. Luckily, it was all good so I and my broadcast partner could be sincere on the endorsement but had that not been the case we would have been expected to fake it. We both chuckled over that and pondered how we would have handled it had we not been so impressed with the glasses. Does this still happen? Who knows, but it’s why I can be skeptical when I hear these things, and it’s contributing to my struggle with this blog. All you hear about is “monetizing” and figuring out how to make money on your blog podcast, or Social Media in general. Everyone is a “Content Creator” these days. The crazy videos of people pulling pranks, etc. is all there to get you to click on them so they can show how many clicks/followers they have so they can monetize it all. There are workshops online teaching how to do this, thus all of the recipe accounts with people teaching you how to cook something, as an example. Heck, there are even online workshops about how to have your own online workshop you can make money off of, and people DO make massive amounts of money. Me? I just want to write and make people laugh. It’s an old school belief, I know. Apparently that is my “product” I guess. I also ask myself what if an endorsement opportunity happened? I guess my only thought is to deal with it as it comes, if it even does. It’s not my goal.
I guess I’m going to stubbornly stick to my guns and write even though you hear marketers/influencers say blogs are dead. Oh well, there’s maybe some of you old folks out there who get it, like me. I don’t want to live my retirement life hampered by the pressure of creating digital content in every moment of my life, being that calculated over everything I do. “Wait, let’s stop and take a photo…this would be great content.” I will and can find time to write and share like my beloved Erma Bombeck did years ago with her newspaper column, and I’m going to stick to my “Old School” guns and do that.
I want to prove humans can still connect in that way: Reading words. I need to be true to me. (Long form videos on YouTube….who knows?…me and The Fisherman? I don’t know that I’m coordinated enough to fish and run a camera and do I really want to be consumed with editing videos or, rather, do I share it all simply with writing and photos?) Never say never, but relaxed time is also important. I understand that now in retirement. So I’m now just going to write and hopefully it can be funny at times and maybe you and others will like it and you’ll share it with your friends and point them towards this blog. That’s it. I just saw on the news last week that the “Gen Z” demographic (those born from 1997 onward meaning the oldest are only 27) are growing weary of all the selling on Social Media platforms but I’m not kidding myself into believing I’m writing for them anyway, or the Millennials. But never say never. Maybe my old school ways and belief I can simply write funny stuff people will want to read will come full circle. I wasn’t Erma Bombeck’s target audience with her syndicated newspaper column back in the day but my Mom turned me onto her writing, I loved it and couldn’t wait for the days her column appeared in the paper. I either read it while eating my cereal in the morning, or a plopped down on the couch later in the day and ready it. Either way, I loved what she wrote. Can I do that now for readers? I don’t know but I certainly can’t if I don’t write. So stay tuned and tell your friends if I make you laugh. Maybe we can do this in a grassroots way and build an audience. Or I’ll just be satisfied with making a few people laugh. I just like to write and I know I have to be true to myself in that and not get wrapped up in monetizing. What happens is what happens. If you made it this far, thank you! I promise to write more and to hopefully make you laugh with my observations.
Observations on getting used to being one of those gray-haired retired people 