Eight years ago, thanks to the encouragement of Toby Bloomberg and coaching of Paul Chaney, I started this blog. Immediately, opportunity began to come to me since blogging was then a novel medium.
Around the nation and right here in Connecticut at the West Hartford Public Library I was invited to speak about blogging. Audiences were more curious than they were eager to become early adopters. That was disappointing since I was an evangelist.
Also, since this is a global medium, assignments for more general kinds of writing came from around the globe. I was busy both with blogging and client work.
But the more important development has been that blogging forced me to become a more adept marketer. Bloggers serve two masters. One is search engines. The other is the reader. That demands learning to zero in on topics which involve keywords which are trending and at the same time package them in headlines and content which capture and sustain attention. That ability became internalized. Yes, I have morphed into a marketing animal.
Also, blogging, as every artist knows, serves as one way to heal. It's cheaper than therapy and is available on-demand. Six and a half years ago when my canine animal companion Molly Mittens died on the vet's table, I blogged compulsively about that loss. I am still posting about it, especially around the holidays. Pet grief remains a mystery to me. Why does it continue to hurt so much?
Eventually, as with just about every development, with blogging the novelty wore off, others saw a good thing and moved in, and the rush of stardom was over. The big brands like Business Insider, Gawker, and Mediabistro now dominate the scene. Once in a while a post I create does go viral and there is that old rush. Here is a case study of one such post. Twinkle twinkle little star. I was back shining brightly for a few days.
So, how about now? I have decided to stay with blogging because it's the only part of my writing life that I have full control over. Editors for my other published work will object to this or be snide about that. Clients, as Don Draper noted on "Mad Men," come and go. The print books I published had a relatively short shelf life. My blog is what I wake up to in the morning and use to sort out the day before bedtime. Yes, it's the way I have been framing my existence for eight years.
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