Blogging, podcasting and other adventures

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Even though I've spent a good amount of time over the past couple days refraining from physical activity as much as possible, it's still been kind of busy. For one thing, it's Holy Week and I work in church music. So, as usual for church staff, the time leading up to Easter (and leading up to Christmas) is a time of heightened activity. However, I also got my second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday, and I did have some side effects that made me feel lousy for a short time. Oh, and I also twisted my ankle a week ago, so I've been trying to take things a little easier than usual, as far as physical activity goes.

Meanwhile, I've been using this forced physical inactivity as an opportunity for reviving my podcast, which used to be on Podbean, and has recently moved to Anchor.fm. (For more info on the podcast, see the home page of Corybanter.com.) I've recorded a couple episodes of the podcast, set up some advertising, set up the opportunity for my listeners to donate to the project, and created an accompanying Wordpress blog that coordinates with the podcast. 

I've also been trying to simplify my blogging, something that has been a continuing challenge for several years. I suppose I would be a bit more successful as a blogger (and podcaster) if I simply chose one theme/subject and just covered that. But that's not me; my interests are a bit more diverse, and so I've chosen, for better or worse, to blog and podcast on various things that are interesting to me, whether that be Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, or dictionaries. Or something else... But I realize I can't maintain a different blog for every single thing I find interesting. I feel like I need to have the ability to blog about whatever occurs to me at any particular time, as well as maintaining a few blogs that have a particular focus.

So for now I've settled on a bit of a compromise: this blog, Corybanter.com, is what I'm thinking of as my main blog, my personal blog. It's where I can continue to share thoughts on whatever I have on my mind at any given time. I've chosen Weebly as the platform for this blog, as I find it the easiest to use effectively. At the same time, I'm maintaining (or trying to maintain) a few blogs that deal with a particular subject: Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes, the Bible. AND I'm blogging over on Medium.com, and attempting to make a few bucks with their Partner Program (thus far, not a particularly profitable exercise). I'm using my original Tumblr blog as just sort of a hub to link to the other blogs, as well as an Archives for some of my earliest attempts at blogging. If that sounds confusing...well, it is. At some point, I may have to streamline even more. I just may have to pick my favorite platform and move all of my blogging to that platform. But I haven't reached that point yet.

There's a little part of me that wishes I could make blogging and podcasting my main gig. But so far I haven't quite figured out how to do that. And since I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts online, and I'm having fun sharing my spoken thoughts in podcast form, I'm sort of dipping my toe into what I know is a vast ocean of online content. Will I ever be able to be find even a modicum of success in the endeavor? I don't know. Stay tuned to find out!