Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Asleep at the wheel

Golly, gosh, we sure have been neglecting this blog for the whole month of May.  Guilty as charged!  All of our online efforts have been going into Salmon River News and our twin Facebook accounts.  We've probably put up a combined total of 50 or more posts on those two Facebooks. Meanwhile, even though we've only written 10 articles for Salmon River News, those articles have chewed up great gobs of time.

Once again, we must apologize to our Dear Friends and Loyal Blog Readers for our dereliction of duty here at Live Simple Central.  You've seen this little before and you will undoubtedly see him again.  He's a reminder to remember "I Will Be Good" here on this blog.  Honest.  It's not that we're in the typical "writer's block/slump" phase.  Far from it.  We're churning out all sorts of stuff on a daily basis.  Sadly, none of what we're churning turns up here.

Part of the blame for lack of production on this blog falls squarely on Facebook.  We keep trying to wean ourselves away from Facebook.  The cartoon you see here sums up the whole Facebook thing.  One of the nice things about Facebook is that it is a cross between the chatty length of a blog post and the brevity of Twitter.  Facebook users tend to think in "paragraphs" as opposed to Twitter's 140 characters and a blog's blank palette.  Most Facebook users would be sorely challenged to put together a readable blog post, let alone the 1,542 posts we have written here.

In fact, Facebook users show a marked aversion to "long reads."  A "long read" on Facebook is another more than two short paragraphs.  If you are consistently putting up "long reads" on your Facebook, your so-called Friends will fall away like leaves leaving the tree in a November windstorm.  Consequently, it's always tempting to get on Facebook and put up some little ditty and this or that.  It's so much easier that sitting here to build a decent blog post.  Facebook is very habit forming, so much so you could arguably call it a genuine addiction.

Meanwhile, the Facebook we use to promote Salmon River News actually does its job well.  The website thrives on the attention it gets from Facebook users.  The website and the Salmon River Facebook have a symbiotic relationship with one another.  To make an analogy, think of the Salmon River News website as CNN News and the Salmon River Facebook as CNN headline News.  We can put breaking news on the Facebook and then do a longer more detailed article on the website.  It's working very well and, for better or worse, we are locked into using the Salmon River Facebook forever as a component of our business plan.  (Yes, believe it or not, we actually DO have a business plan.)

Currently, we have substantial backlogs of both posts for this blog and articles for Salmon River News.  One of the reasons we have been struggling to get material posted here is that our mindset is still fixed on our own perceived need to make posts long here.  If we could get over thinking like that, we could get much more material up and running on this blog.  Anyway, it's a challenge that we clearly haven't yet met.

We appreciate your understanding and patience in this situation.  Many Cheers, jp




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