That is the question.
I’m not sure what Hamlet had on his mind when he questioned the point of living, if indeed that was what he was pondering, and my current mulling is not quite so extensional, but deciding to keep on writing my blog, or not, still holds a lot of significance for me.
I became a writer late in life. I mean, I’ve been writing all my life, mostly as a tool of my professional persona (student, human resources professional, consultant and coach) but it was only in my sixties that I actually began writing a book (The Dynamics of Management) (You can read about my beginning literary journey in my early blogs: here (The Journey Begins), and here (Getting Serious, Taking Risks), and here (Between Hubris and Humility), or for that matter, here’s the whole catalogue of my thoughts on writing.) Once I had published The Dynamics of Management, I then kept on writing more books – memoirs about the family dogs, memoirs about loss and transition, and a couple of novels.
I found I really enjoyed the process of writing – the intellectual effort of hatching ideas and bringing them to the page, the solitary concentration of immersing myself in the process, the endless diversions into research (thank goodness for the internet and Wikipedia), even the discipline of editing and revising and making the book better. I suppose, truth be told, since much of this pursuit accelerated after the death of my wife, Marlene, writing became my therapy, not so much as massaging grief but as a means for giving myself purpose.
Lately I have found my drive to write has lagged. I don’t feel the energy to carry out another writing project. There seems a question of which begets which, a sort of a chicken and egg problem: Have I lost drive and therefor lack energy, of have I lost energy and so have diminished drive. I might have called this blog post, ‘To write or not to write, that is the question’.
But this post is about blogging, not the broader writing problem. Or is it?

(I like this graphic because it connotes to me the scrambled synapses struggling to produce something coherent.)
I started blogging as a means of attracting interest in my consulting work. (You can go here (AFS Consulting/Blog/Off The Wall) and see the blogs buried with the Groundhog Day Cards!) Many bloggers write blogs not so much to ‘share’ (god I hate that expression!) their knowledge and insights, but as a means of marketing their brand. Later, when I had the writing bit between my teeth, I started AFS Publishing and began blogging to promote that brand. In fact, at first, after Marlene died, I began blogging about my transition to writing as an avocation, but also about my journey with grief and reflections on life and meaning, (and later converted that series of posts into a book – Travels With Myself); only later did it morph into a general blog to keep myself and my books in front of my readers, with hope of attracting more readers to my website, and my books. My topics ranged from writing and publishing, and marketing, to any number of other societal issues, flotsam and jetsam, that came into my mind.
But truth be told, as a marketing device, my blog hasn’t been very successful; instead of my subscribers’ list growing organically into the thousands, my followers’ list has ebbed and flowed – the followers gained matched by those who unsubscribed – so that the total number has stayed at around 120. I still get 1-2 new requests to follow monthly but the applicants give no information on themselves and their email addresses are unknown to me – so I don’t add them to my subscribers list. I used to have a space at the bottom of each blog post for readers to leave comments – and some of my readers left interesting remarks which I often responded to – but the number of spammers exceeded the legitimate commenters by a factor of 10. And as far as I can tell, not one book was sold as a direct result of the semi-monthly blog.
Writing the blog twice a month takes real effort, and the pressure of a deadline (each 15th and 30th of the month) becomes somewhat stressful (oscillating between eustress and dystress). Identifying a topic to write about is usually inspired by the muse, but sometimes the muse has no messages for me and I press to come up with something originating from my left hemisphere (the conscious rational mind) rather than the preferred source, the right hemisphere (the subconscious creative mind). In either case I still have standards of writing I wish to keep, and my goal is the same – to entertain, possibly to educate – but I often wonder if the reader can tell the difference between an inspired blog and a forced one. WordPress, the platform I use to post my blogs, gives me feedback as to whether the blog post is readable. A simple scale of coloured dots: red, amber, and green; I have a constant record of reds. I’m not sure exactly what red means in WordPress’ lexicon but we can assume it is likely that my posts are too long, too complex, with too many multisyllabic words, and likely, semi-colons. I like to assume that my readers are educated literate people, with attention spans that tolerate texts that take 7-10 minutes to read, and are interested in complex topics/issues. They usually contain snippets of humour (satire or irony) though I wonder if I’m the only one who gets my subtle (obscure?) humour. Perhaps I over-estimate my readers’ interest in my posts, or perhaps I over-estimate my own capacity to entertain, never mind educate.
As I’ve reported previously in these posts – frequently, pathetically – of my apparent 120 followers, about 70% (according to my DirectMailforMac software) open the newsletter notice of the blog post, and of that 70% only about 21.5% (or 15% of the total) actually click the link to the blog post. (And of the 21% it isn’t clear how many actually read the post itself!) (For that matter, of the 70% who open the newsletter I can’t know how many actually read it, but it seems 4 times as many followers want to know what is going on in my personal life (via the newsletter) than read the blog post.) Compounding this confusion, on closer inspection it becomes apparent that the people who open the newsletter vary from notice to notice, and the ones who click through to the post itself are not always the same 15%. I’m told these are quite good take-up rates, for which I should feel grateful – but after all, I know almost all of these subscribers personally so I have reason to believe these people ought to be interested in my blog posts. But really, they have no obligation to read my stuff.
I’ve thought of culling the list of followers but when I examine the entire list of people who at least occasionally open the mail, and even those who click through to the blog, the results are actually closer to 90% and 30%. It costs me nothing to keep them on the list, except my irrationally bruised ego.
I write the blog to promote my AFS Publishing brand and expand my followership, with the hoped-for consequence of stimulating more sales of my books. I write the blog to challenge myself to complete a project (with deadlines) using some of my best talents; I write the blogs to entertain, possibly educate my readers: and I write the blogs because I enjoy the process of writing.
But I’m not content with my results.
So I get discouraged. To blog or not to blog, that is the question.
But I remind myself that I am a decent writer, even, occasionally, more than decent (and very occasionally, indecent). I write, if not to entertain others, then at least to entertain myself.
I’ve been thinking for a while that if one of my goals is to increase readership, or at least the potential for expanded readership, I ought to write on the Substack platform and be in the position of catching the attention of Substack readers who are not personally known to me and who might be able to expand my subscriptions organically. Who knows, I may even be able to build a readership that includes paying subscribers.
To blog or not to blog?
I think I’ve answered my own question. Thanks for listening.
Doug Jordan, reporting to you from Kanata
© Douglas Jordan & AFS Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of these blogs and newsletters may be reproduced without the express permission of the author and/or the publisher, except upon payment of a small royalty, 5¢.