The Bowling Tournament In Maine

Let me share a story with you. When I was a kid, I lived on an Air Force base in Limestone, Maine. People used to ask who my dad made mad enough to send us that far up, but so be it.

I used to bowl in Saturday morning leagues, and I wasn’t bad as a kid. One year, a group of us decided we wanted to go to this state tournament for kids our age; I have no idea where it was at this point, but I wish I could remember it. Anyway, we left with our chaperone on a Friday, headed to this particular town somewhere in Northern Maine, south of where we were already living. I knew things were going to be somewhat different as soon as we went into the hotel.
Continue reading The Bowling Tournament In Maine

Ending The Ability To Leave Comments When You’re Shutting Down A Blog

Anyone who’s visited this blog over the years known I’m not big on turning off comments on my blog posts. It’s something I’ve never actually done on this blog or my business blog, because I’m not fearful of writing a post that’s going to generate a lot of negative publicity… not that I’d care all that much if I had something I felt needed to be said.


 

With that in mind, I’ve recently turned off comments on a couple of blogs I’m discontinuing… with good reason. Not only did I do that, but I discovered an easy way to do it so I don’t have to deal with the issue again.
Continue reading Ending The Ability To Leave Comments When You’re Shutting Down A Blog

The Word For 2020 Is… Socialization

As we close out 2019, a year that I’m glad is finally over, I have to say that I’ve been through a lot of different things, including an interesting bit of growth and thought. Some of it’s been personal, some business. Because it’s been all over the board, I’ve been working on goals and plans for 2020, and I’m sharing one with you.

Socialization

As you see above, the word for 2020 for me is socialization. It’s an intriguing word because most of the internet marketing gurus like to use the word “engagement”. Unfortunately, truth be told, most of those using the word aren’t actually doing it. I’m sure they think they are, but they’re not. Why?
Continue reading The Word For 2020 Is… Socialization

What Do You View As Failure?

There are a lot of articles and videos on the topic of “failure”. They tell stories of people who have, in their words, failed multiple times, only to get back up and try again. Sometimes they succeed at what they were trying to do; other times they discovered something else useful out of all the other failures they had to work through.

This concept of “failure” is a tough one for me to deal with because of its strong negative connotations. I don’t like the word in general, which is why I wrote on my other blog years ago that I prefer experimented instead. While motivational and sales training types try to turn the word “failure” into something that helps you become better, I find that having words like that lingering too long in one’s mind is more depressing than encouraging.
Continue reading What Do You View As Failure?

Better Blogging, Part Deux

I hope you checked out the first part of this mega-pillar post. If not, you can see the first half of Better Blogging here. It was a monster, but this one is even larger as I drive my points home.


It’s time to talk about actually writing blog posts. Every blog post is going to need a title, but there’s nothing saying you have to have a title first. Some blogging experts will tell you that you should create a title for maximum SEO benefits. Whereas I’m sure that can help, sometimes creating a title that will entice readers to come by works just as well.
Continue reading Better Blogging, Part Deux

Blogging, Social Media, Writing, Motivation and General Stuff