Why Have You Not Written Here For So Long?

I write a lot if I have never mentioned it before. And I write about a wide variety of topics. I very much enjoy every bit of the process of writing. As my bio suggests, "keeping the pen moving" is crucial to the process of continuing to write anything.

The reality is that Blogspot has been both a rewarding and disappointing experience for me across all the blogs I have on the system currently. 

This is not the only blog I have neglected for some time, although I do spend more time on The Springboard, which I consider to by my "hub" if you want to call it that. Needless to say, I have spent more time on other sites that offer a bit more interaction on my posts. Something I enjoy. And it always feels like I am reaching a wider audience than these blogs have been able to generate.

I should point out that I am trying to change that now, going forward, and am adding content to all of my blogs.

But over the years I have written in many different places. Bubblews, Daily Two Cents, Niume, WebAnswers, HubPages, read.cash and myLot. There has simply been more opportunity to reach more people and even to generate more revenue from my content.

And that's NOT to say that my purpose for writing is to make money. But let's face it, more money is what opens up more opportunities to write more since time is a valuable thing, and one of course has to eat.

Building an audience in this space is honestly a tough thing, even in those other spaces. It takes time. It takes a lot of content. And you have to be constantly incentivized to write anywhere based on the "reaction" you are able to get, and those other places have simply offered more.

That being said, I opened up a "fan page" of sorts on Facebook where I can direct people to go to follow more of the other things I write about and the places where I write. It's slow like anything is. I created the page many years ago mainly to highlight what I was doing on HubPages. 

Now I see it as more of an opportunity to have it be a "place to collect and share all of my work." 

At the same time, having that "one stop shop" to showcase it all gives me much more encouragement to get back to work on some of my other neglected blogs, such as this one, expand my audience, and make it easier for them to find what I am writing about.

Building from the outside in, so to speak.

The long and short is that over time I simply have not appreciated fully the value that Blogspot brings me, to have complete and full editorial control of my content, to post what I want and let the audience decide what interests them and what doesn't.

I have changed my mind and will now be adding content to all of my pages here on Blogspot, and hope you like what I am doing and will join me along my journey back.

As for this blog in general, while I generally pose questions as a topic to write an answer about, I encourage you to stop in and if you have a question you want me to try to answer I would love to give it a go.

Do you like the way I write or the things I write about? Check out my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/jimbauerwrites and get a peek at more of my writing elsewhere in the blogosphere.

What the hell is the Springboard Journal?

A while back there happened to be a few sites that came along that paid a little bit, and were fun to write for mainly because you could write about just about anything you wanted to. The "articles," and I use that word lightly, did not have to be informative, or explanatory, exploratory, or anything else of that nature. I likened these sites to expanded versions of Twitter or Facebook. You started off with that one simple thought in mind, "What's on your mind?" And you simply went with that and wrote about it.

People would come by, read, like, and comment. It was as simple as that.

Of course what made those sites die a slow and painful death was not that they did not require phenomenal content, or even that the vast majority of writers for those sites could barely write their own names. It was the business model that they used that was simply not sustainable. They were desperate to attract writers. Any writers. And they paid for those likes and comments in order to entice people to not only dance around the site and the posts, but to keep on posting. Even though when I started on these sites I knew they wouldn't last, I wrote for them anyway knowing that before they were laid to rest I would at least cash in on a little bit of that enticement. That made it worth it even if it wasn't ever going to last.

That all aside, I did enjoy reading many of the daily posts. Even the ones which were just about what someone had for dinner. You got to know people through their posts, and while the content was not all extremely entertaining, there was still enough entertainment value, and even perhaps enough of a feel of being that proverbial fly on the wall, that it kept you coming back.

I post often for Twitter and for Facebook, and of course I maintain a few blogs here on BlogSpot. But I kind of longed to go back to those old sites, to that old format, to just simply post whatever is on my mind. To post what I did today, what just happened to me a minute ago, and perhaps what I plan to do to tomorrow. It was also an opportunity and a great place to share a little bit of what else I do on the Internet like music, YouTube videos, or whatever else strikes my fancy.

To that end I thought what the heck? Why not? Why not just start a blog whereas the aim is simply to do exactly what I described above. A blog about nothing and everything all at once, and a blog that requires no set word count, or post count, or even great and phenomenal content, but at the very least content which someone out there might find interesting enough to keep up with.

My life can get quite interesting actually. I am a bit of a character for those who know me.

So what the hell is the Springboard Journal? It's a blog about nothing and everything in the daily life of me. If you want to come on over and see what's going on, I'd be happy for you to join me. The aim is to post as often as things come up that I care to post about. Again, about nothing and everything. Should be fun, and we'll see where it goes. And knowing me, the blog will probably be all over the place from funny happenings, to fun times, to not so fun times, to all out rants about things that might be irking me at any given time.

THE SPRINGBOARD JOURNAL