Why I blog,

Image by Johannes P Osterhoff via Flickr

I confess! 

If you haven’t noticed, I have been using a plugin here on my blog which recycles old posts. It feels like cheating because I have been spending more time on the business side of my daily work hours and the number of new blog posts has been dropping as a result. It is a random process and I am constantly surprized at the content, like the PDCA recycled post from two years ago that popped up recently. Back then I proposed to look at three areas of activity in my web life: blogging, social networking and making money. People have commented about hearing more.  I could go back and see what I reported but since the question is still relevant today, I think it is worth a new response. I know that I have a completely different understanding about my mission on the web and I finally seem to have traction in the business area. So today I will cover the area of blogging. What is my purpose in continuing to blog, both here and at Cantankerous Old Coots?

Back in the old days. 

I have been blogging long enough that the truth is shrouded in mists of confusion and rationalization but when  started blogging, I believed that you could make money on the web and that while making money with your blog is hard, successful bloggers could make money. I had participated in multi-level marketing businesses for a long time but found that my personality rebelled at the marketing system from my upline. I was burned out talking to people who weren’t looking for a business. When I did some research I discovered that there were sccessful MLM business owners who made contact through the web. I didn’t understand how and I began to follow people that seemed to know what they were doing trying to learn more.

Becoming an Alpha

What I did understand was that I needed to have some authority and that one way to do this was building a successful blog. So I got serious about becoming a successful blogger, maybe even a famous blogger.   My vision at the time was that buildnig a successful blog would give me a following of people who would be a target market for my MLM business. Looking back, I see that my thinking was naïve. There was logic to my reasoning but I knew nothing about marketing. Just because I was targeting retirement aged people as blog readers, didn’t mean that they were interested in starting a business. They weren’t my target market.  But this gets ahead of my story because my business model required that I bevome a successful blogger with a list of people interested in the content of my blog. That, initially, was my reason for blogging.

 So how is that working for me?

Well despite a lot of work, spending money on blogging courses and agonizing over my niche, my blog hasn’t accomplished its original mission. My list is small and I think that the people on it are unlikely to be looking for a busines opportunity. Yet, I continue to blog.  So why am I still blogging?  What is my mission? Right now, I think it is purely selfish.

My blog is a life journal.

Part of my life mission is living an outrageous retirement lifestyle. For me that means that my wife and I are active and engaged in life. We are traveling as much as we can afford and taking time to smell the roses. Right now, my blog is more of a personal journal documenting my lifestyle and keeping me on target. These days I have modest expectations. I don’t expect to attract a wide following because my content provides limited value. I don’t provide information and advice for people planning their retirement. I don’t pretend to know the ‘right’ answers about financial planning and investments. I can’t pretend to tell people how they should live and what they should do. What I know is that life is an adventure and that you only have one shot. You don’t get a do over. I just know that up to now, I have been timid and conventional in my life. I have squandered many years and now as my body begins to let me down, I don’t have time to waste. I have just a little time left to live and I want to live it as well as possible. My blog is the documentation of that effort.

 And that’s it as I see it.

I expect that a year from now, I will have a different answer but right now September 25,2011 this is how I feel about blogging. And follow the link if you want to know what I thought about blogging two years ago.