I know it is hard for me to believe that I have been doing this for so long, I just looked it up, and the average is two to three years.  I guess if you are having fun and don’t look at it as a job, it is easier.  I think that I started this out of restless energy and with the realization that I would not be working forever.  My life as a clothier, while an excellent profession, had changed and was not the industry that it was, when I started.  I sometimes think that today, the term proper attire, means clean clothes.  I wanted to see, if a blog was something that could keep me occupied a bit, during my retirement, after all, I haven’t chased a little white ball across grassy plains since college.

Periodically, I take a look at my early writings and cringe, not that I am a great writer today, but I think that I have matured and acquired a “conceit” of writing, meaning that I think that I have found a voice that I am comfortable with.  At first, I tried to emulate some of the other writers that I respected, and to be told, there is a small group of us that are still pounding away on their keyboards for the same eleven years and some maybe even longer.  It eventually evolved into my meandering mind, creating an image of someone across the table from me, as we nibble on food, drink some wine, and talk about wine as well; though the cigars and the smoke have now dissipated.  The first year, I wrote an article every night, and after the first year, I became a slacker and only publish every other day, and always at the same time of 01:10 GMT, just because I like the appearance of it, as I log it in with my publisher.  Of course, the big question that I always get, is do you get paid to be a blogger and an influencer?  I still don’t know what an influencer is, though I think it means getting plenty of free stuff, under the guise of writing glowing reports, well that is not me, because first I would be embarrassed to ask for anything free and second, since I shave every morning, I have to look at this face each morning.  As for getting paid, hah, it costs money to do this, not to mention, that I think that I am on my third or fourth desk chair since it started.

I write an article, and send it to my publisher and eventually when the time comes for it to publish it magically appears; I like to have articles waiting, in case my Bride and I decide to go somewhere, I usually have enough articles that if we are gone a week or ten days, my announcements of the trip won’t appear, until we are back home, why let the world know that your house is empty.  The new article magically appears on Twitter, which I still don’t understand, but it does seem to have a life of its own.  It used to appear magically on Facebook, but they keep making it more difficult for a blogger, because they want to wring money from me, for a labor of love.  For a mere seven dollars an article, a pittance, they will guarantee me thousands of loyal readers for each publication, but it isn’t real, just like Facebook, so I continue limping along there, mostly to keep track of family and friends.  In March of 2017 I started on Instagram, being coaxed by other bloggers.  I have systematically been attempting to get every photo and article entered on Instagram, usually two postings a day and hopefully I will have it all in sync within a year, so that my articles will eventually make sense in a real time manner.  When this is published, I will probably have 3,990 photos and mini-articles posted on Instagram and this should be my 2,193^rd article that I have published and my poor Bride has had to endure some crazy times with me.