Internet, newsletters, design, music, etc.
I search for Megadeth in iTunes / Apple Music and hit enter. Wait… wait… okay, finally it loads.
I do the same in Spotify and I don’t even need to hit enter – it just loads the results.
I’ve been using iTunes forever, but in the past several years it’s become almost unusable. Testing out Spotify recently really has me thinking of making the switch.
I was tagged for this on Facebook, but rather than give my work to a 3rd party who will sell ads against while I get nothing in return, I am putting my list here where it shall remain so long as I pay my hosting bill. Facebook, on the other hand, well…
EDIT April 11th, 2018 – HOW did I forget Guns N Roses’ ‘Appetite for Destruction?’ It’s the album that got me to pick up the guitar, THEN the bass (because I stunk on guitar). It’s the album I listened to over and over again, to this DAY.
I wrote this back in January 2014.
Mobile is Surging
I love this. If even Google is struggling to make a dollar from mobile, where’s that going to leave the bloggers?“Just three years ago, in 2009, (Global mobile traffic) was at a measly 1%. It edged up to 4% in 2010, and it hit 13% in November 2012, according to StatCounter Global Stats.”
It’s coming and you can’t stop it. As Napster did to the music biz, mobile will do the same to traditional web media. If you rely on four banner ad placements on your blog page x your daily traffic, everyday, the surge towards mobile will be devastating.
Yeah, I’d say mobile surged a bit.
I hit my $500 goal for the 2018 Blue Cross Broad Street Run. Together we raised $500 for Students Run Philly Style.
It’s sad that after-school programs are getting axed, and funding for schools drying up, and that we need to resort to running 10 miles in Philadelphia (or run 200+ miles across Haiti) for good things to happen in this world, but that’s the way it is.
Can it change? Well, it changes every time someone pulls out their card and donates money to these things. It’s not perfect, but it works, and we’ll keep doing it.
Lots of people start email newsletters.
Starting is the easy part.
Running an email newsletter, well, that’s serious work. But really it’s not.
Everyday we read, consume, have thoughts, conversations, take photos – there is never a reason to sit down at our computers and not have anything to write about.
It’s just that sitting at computer can be paralyzing.
I’m telling you – if we took half of our flippant Tweets and just threw them into a draft folder (text file, Bear, WordPress), we’d never run out of material.
The allure of tossing these ideas and pondering to Twitter is strong, I get it. You’ll get four likes, and you’ll recognize some of the faces, and maybe one or two people will reply. But four hours later that Tweet is gone, pretty much forever.
But if you put that on a blog, or in your newsletter, it has a home. It can have a life now.
The fun part? You can do both.
You can Tweet it, than flesh out your thought even more in a bigger piece. The people that don’t use Twitter (which is a lot of people), they can read it now, too. And three years from now, your blog post or newsletter has more of a chance of coming back to life that that Tweet.
Most nights I fall asleep thinking about running. Since I started in July of 2016, it’s been something I’ve been trying to incorporate more of into my life. I bought a bigger bag so I could carry running gear while traveling. I’ve gone to bed earlier so I can rest my body and not get injured. I’ve done my best to run 3-4 times a week, weight train, and keep a regular stretching routine. I turn 42 this year, and I just want to run more.
Speed has never been my thing. For me, it’s always been about distance. Back in my biking days, I rode across most of NJ and PA (in sections). I’ve biked the NYC Century a few times, each time tapping out at the “just” the 70 mile mark. I like this distance thing.
But “The Speed Project” intrigues me. I love the idea of a team making their way from LA to Las Vegas. I love the relay aspect. The camaraderie. The adventure.
Well, The Speed Project happened this past weekend, and a french team won it in 35 hours, 49 minutes. I caught myself spending a bit too much time scrolling through the hashtag and keeping up, probably the first time I really did that. It wasn’t about “who won” at all. I just wanted the scenery, the grit, the pain. It’s like life, but the stakes are a bit lower.
Running is a micro-life. It’s a challenge each day, and most every day I’ve shown up. I’ve had bad-eating days, or days I don’t stretch enough, but when I take those first few steps of a run, I’m starting over. The work I’ve put in since July of 2016 got me here, but I still need to put in the work.
I don’t know – there’s just something about miles of road ahead, and that’s why I set off for some long straight roads this past weekend. The photos I took didn’t do it any justice, but it was a nice five mile run, out and back and it felt great.
Sure, maybe someday I can be fast enough to run with a Speed Project team, but for now I had this. No RV, no team, just me, putting in the work, being patient with myself, and building for whatever is next.
I’m often asked how I just keep at things. How’d I stick with Buzzgrinder, or posting metal trivia questions since 2011? Sending out over 1,200 nerdy metal newsletters since 2012?
We all get 24 hours in a day. If I choose to spend 15 minutes scrolling through Instagram, that’s 15 minutes not doing something else.
In fact, this post was written a few days ago, but then I came back and deleted the whole thing and wrote it from scratch. Was that previous effort wasted? Nope. It was a foundation to build on, that’s it.
Objects in motion stay in motion.