A Thought for the New Year

Blog No. 265

Should I make my blog a newsletter? I mean in addition to the blog itself? It may need some additional formatting (and maybe some severe trimming) but I can’t imagine it’s all that much work. I’ve been doing sort of a newsletter with Arvin to accompany the Flags and High Fives episodes, but even that is a little-bitty thing that pretends to be a behind-the-scenes breakdown, but it really me sputtering out sentences meant to be quippy and to seem informative. The first one was a real thing that I made and Arvin made better, then I just used it as a template to get out the next one in as short a time-frame as possible. Maybe I’m already in over my head (which I definitely am) and I shouldn’t bother, but newsletters seem to be the in thing and if I can hop on the bandwagon without adding another ball to keep in the air. (Did you know I can actually juggle badly?).  I think I’m going to try.

Maybe I can make it a monthly or bi-monthly recap of the blog, but from what I understand, newsletters work better as smaller things, unless you have a really dedicated audience. Bah. It’s all conjecture (or maybe just prattle) at this point. I am way behind on the things I’m doing right now, so thinking about adding more stuff is silly. I still have a bunch of things to get out of for next year that took up too much of my time this year. When it comes down to it, I really have to get more productive. It’s too easy to get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing. The sad thing is, I figured all this stuff out already, but actually implementing those things (like going out to write after a long day at work) are dumb and I hate them.

Hopefully, starting to plan all this stuff now will help me be organized and productive. Christian and I have already started looking at events for 2018. What do we want to go back to, what have we been invited to, what would we like to attend, and what places have we not been yet? With a new book, regular events make sense, and with a couple years of experience, planning it all now is more reasonable. Plus, it can help show us some gaps that we can fill in, and the early scheduling makes fitting everything else in more simple. Perhaps leaving room for me to try the newsletter thing.

I still have plenty of other responsibilities to worry about, form the Podcast, two new books (hopefully), ChiSeries Windsor (if it’s still happening), the currently secret project (that may be a big help in many areas including going to events to sell stuff), and whatever other commitments to other people I’ve made (such as editing, reading, and writing help). There are a few other things on my mind, but they are nonessential projects that would be nice to do when I have the time, considering the progress made with my writing and the like.

I didn’t get really far into the muck with this week’s post. I basically stated a personal conjecture and responded to myself with an enthusiastic ‘maybe’. Some of my more successful personal projects were worked out in this way though (on this blog). Maybe I wanted to get some feedback, but I get so little that to assume folks would respond is wishful thinking. Still, can’t blame a guy for trying. Likely I’ll plan to figure it all out and maybe take some time where I should be writing and try out some stuff. Maybe I’ll get overwhelmed early and it will remain a project on the back burner. I still have a couple of real forward and backward looking posts to make on either side of the new year (according to the previous yearly posts) so stay tuned for those. I may have figured this out by then.