Earlier today, I found myself in a discussion with a professional author friend of mine, someone who is part of my writing critique group. It isn’t like we get to talk a lot, in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him face-to-face in a couple of years. However, we got to talking and the conversation rolled around to dealing with amateur writers and I was rather surprised at the response, because he seems to think pretty much like I do.
Here I was thinking I was alone.
I know that virtually nobody reads this blog, mostly because I never advertise it, so perhaps I’m just talking to myself, but I’ve been thinking lately and I wanted to see what others thought, if anyone ever sees this at all.
First though, I need to talk about YouTube and that might also spawn another entirely separate post about YouTube stamp channels and my thoughts on them specifically, but for now, we’ll just talk generally.
See me below the fold for more.
If anyone has been out in the world of stamp collecting lately, you’ll know that there’s been a lot of talk about modern post offices putting out NFTs of their stamps. It’s very limited at the moment and thankfully so, it’s desperately trying to make money by doing anything but the actual job that the post offices exist to do.
What else is new, right? But here’s why this isn’t a part of philately, even though there are a few voices that are adamant that it is. Here is why they are simply wrong.
Now I’ve been thinking about this for a very long time, but it strikes me that most movie reviewers, most especially these days found on YouTube, really aren’t that hot. In fact, I find that most of them come off like frustrated filmmakers who, in the absence of their own success, they just want to go after other movie makers to assuage their own failed egos.
So let’s talk about that a bit.
Now that I’m sort of kicking around Facebook again, and trust me, I’m doubting that decision every single day, I’m starting to see different perspectives and different ideas and, at least some of the time, it’s starting to look very similar to what I’ve faced before.
Take this as an example, something that’s going on right now. It’s really one of the problems that writers face and why so many people never actually go anywhere.
There’s always a lot of talk in the hobby about recruiting new stamp collectors and I’ve never really had anyone that I could encourage. My kids, as I’ve said before, they were both born without the collector gene and they aren’t interested in collecting anything. Nobody else I know cares. It was only very recently that I finally found someone who showed a little interest and…
Well, read on and see why this isn’t turning out well.
So I finally gave up and created another personal Facebook account, thinking that it had to be better than Reddit, at least if I stuck to the more “professional” sounding groups and yeah, it really isn’t.
What the hell is wrong with people to day? Here’s yet another story.
So we’re finally at the point where I know my exact numbers for 2021, after all of the books have been written and all of them have been edited, at least through the beta-stage and I have a good handle on what I actually accomplished last year.
Let’s go over it and I’ll let you in on a couple of things that are going on for 2022, for anyone who is interested.
I recently had an extended conversation with a couple of other philatelists and the subject was how we could get young kids interested in collecting stamps. A lot of things were suggested and eventually, the discussion rolled around to how we got involved, back in the day.
I told my story, but I admitted that my path in wasn’t one that anyone could ever follow today. It’s a shame but the world has changed to such a degree that people back when I got started, our stories can almost certainly never be repeated.
But I’ll pass it along anyhow, just in case anyone has any ideas.
This has come up in discussions a couple of times of late and I thought that I would put my thoughts down in one place, once and for all, because I’d rather have somewhere to point people to if they’re curious, rather than having to go over the same ground time and time again.
I’m really dissatisfied with modern social media when it comes to the things that I do. Here’s why and here’s what I’d like to see instead. If anyone has any ideas where I can go for these things, I’m all ears.
