The 100th Blog – Lessons Learned


This hasn’t been a good month for blogs.  July is almost over and I believe this is just my second.  I have lots of excuses.  The water damage drained me.  We spent ten days on the road visiting loved ones.  I have taken on additional duties in my golf association (doing anything for the first time is time consuming and unnerving).  And, the dog ate my computer.  Now, you have to figure out which of the above statements is not accurate.

This is my hundredth publication and I gave a lot of thought to the subject.  I believe that 100 blogs should qualify me as a grand blogmeister.  I figured at this time on my path to blogtopia, I would be much wiser.  I am not.  But, I have learned some lessons which I would like to pass on.

First, running a website hasn’t made me a computer wizard.  I thought that I would continue to pick up neat things that I would add on to expand the excitement of the site.  I was certain by now I would be posting pictures.  I made myself a promise that it would happen by last March.  It did not.  Go Daddy runs my website and I suspect if I go back to them and tell them I want to be able to post pictures, they will make it happen.  They have been very supportive.

I suspect to get what I want I will have to spend a few bucks.  That won’t be bad.  Right now, the site costs me practically nothing.  No unkind comments please.  The good news is that the site doesn’t run on gas!

I’m a one man marketer and when anyone is foolish enough to ask me what I am doing with my retirement, they get a three-minute pitch on my website.  Then, I give them one of my old business cards with the blog site hand written across it.  I even changed my Virginia vanity license plate to “RICEQPS” (you only get so many letters).  While pumping gas, a fellow asked me about my license plate.  Out comes the cards.

Another lesson I learned is that even good friends who take my card and tell me they will visit my website don’t.  I used to pout.  Some close friends told me they would subscribe, but they didn’t.  I pouted some more.  Then, I realized that these people have a life of their own.  Not visiting RICEQUIPS.COM doesn’t make them evil or even bad.  It just makes them busy.  So, I forgive them in absentia.  Since they aren’t reading this, it will have to be in absentia.

Of the hundred blogs, I think some are really good and some should be deleted.  I don’t plan on deleting any, but I need to develop the site so people are pointed to the better ones.  The three postings that have been read the most are: TV Commercials – Can You Hear Me Now?; My Green Visor; and The Indoor Perfect Storm.  If you have read this far and are not familiar with those three, you might want to check them out.

Tim McGraw had a song out entitled, “My Next Thirty Years.”  The idea was that he would try to do better in his next thirty years.  Well, I plan to do better in my next 100 blogs.

3 thoughts on “The 100th Blog – Lessons Learned”

  1. Hi Jack,
    I just wanted you to know I didn’t throw the card away. It was a good match today. I didn’t play very well, but Al kept us in the match. The company, of course, was the best part of it. That’s really what’s best about the Retiree’s League: You get to meet a lot of interesting people. Hope to see you around Springfield, and in furture matches. The lunch was wholesome. Good thing. My wife refuse to cook on Thursdays. It’s my reponsibility to fill up at lunchtime. Keep up the blogging, and I hope to go back and examine some of your archives.

    Paul

  2. What a treat.  After writing in my 100th blog that no one who takes my hand written website card  really looks at my site, Paul Brennan, who was my opponent today at golf, checked into RICEQUIPS.COM.  The golf league is called the Northern Virginia Retired Members Golf Association.  We play one of the fine country clubs in Northern Virginia each Thursday.  Today, we played the Springfield Golf and Country Club in a very competitive match (that means we lost a close one).  But a good time was had be all.  Jack Rice

  3. Jack,

    I agree with you in this aspect: people indeed have lives that take almost all their time, and little time left to read their friends’ blogs. But, the main problem is that blogs are so easy to make that anyone can do it. But, if everyone writes, who reads? No one, obviously, ’cause they are too busy writing. This dilemma can only be solved, I think, by some selection mechanism that limits the number of active, well-read bloggers to maybe 1/1000 or 1/100000 of active readers.

    Handing out your cards is an excellent way to get people to the site. It did it for me. Now I think we should try to have a Daventry discussion group so that our fingers don’t get so sore.

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