Hello Again
Wednesday, August 25th, 2010Yes, I’m still around.
While I never intended to let this blog lie fallow for so long, that’s how circumstances have affected my life over the last few months. It was never my intention to stop blogging (or even to pause all this time), but a reality check or two has gotten in the way. And survival instincts.
As I mentioned before, I’ve taken on a project or two. And with family duties and everything in between, the spare time I actually require to post here has been hard to squirrel away. The truth told, I have half-written a couple of posts this year. But I fear the subject matter has probably passed its expiration date by now.
And so, here’s the news– I’ve actually been working on a new post, which should be up within a week. And with any luck there might be a few more published here before the year is out.
When I started the Radio Kitchen, my employment situation was a little better, and for some reason I assumed there would be some trickling income from the blog itself. And although there have been a few charitable readers out there (one in particular, and thank you very much Doug), I wouldn’t call the income here much of a trickle. Although there has been a continuing steady readership here, even without recent new content. And I appreciate your readership. And listenership.
Even without a plausible business mode, I’m probably at fault in other ways too. I tend to carry on. Despite the short-attention span
demands of the web itself and blogging in general, I seem to be chronically long form in my expositions. And I don’t tweet either. Or text. At least not yet.
The truth is I’m a magazine writer at heart: One who had already fell off the freelance train by the time the web paradigm changed everything. And I still miss having editors and editorial meetings. So the end result has been that most posts here have ended up being serious commitments of time. And perhaps some of have been too long for some of you to plow through. I don’t know, but I do know that without a specific assignment I tend to dig deep more often than not.. And to ruminate…
I always tell myself that my next post will be a more truncated affair, but that rarely seems to happen. Yet, what I have done here so far stands as a body of work I’m proud of. And for better or worse, I think what I present at the Radio Kitchen is a unique spin on the world of audio broadcasting, if nothing else.
I suppose I should mention what has stirred me to attend to this blog again. Out of the blue, I received a twenty-five dollar donation in my PayPal tip jar the other day. In the attached note he said:
Your radio musings are certainly worth at least what I pledge to my local public radio station every month. I enjoy the enthusiasm and sheer love of radio you bring to your blog.”
Nice, right? I almost blushed. Thank you James.
So for now, I’ll continue on here. But no promises. If anyone has some inkling of a business model I could apply here or a way I could incorporate what I do into something more profitable, I’m open to suggestions and I'd like to hear from ya. (And you can always write me here, whatever you have to say.) Meanwhile, this blog will hopefully continue to be one of the things I “do.”And if you like what I’ve done here so far (and what I do), utilization of the PayPal tip jar can certainly wield some influence over my posting behavior in the future. As I’ve said before, I love working on this blog. But unfortunately, I come to the realization that I only have so much “free” time.
Meanwhile, I’ve ordered one of those new “ultralight” radios from ebay. The Tecsun PL-310, which is supposed to be the best of the bunch for shortwave reception. I'm kind of excited, for some reason. And hopefully I’ll be telling you all about it here in the near future.
I’ll try to keep posting here, and certainly some level of cash flow into this blog would make be encouraging in that regard. As usual, I have a few posts in the pipeline, and one in particular is over half-done.