It’s really been a weird week as far as communications goes. I’ve noticed over the years that it always seems to happen in waves. I’ll go six or seven months without hearing a peep from anyone out of the ordinary and then suddenly I’ll get a handful of calls or emails from people I haven’t heard from in years. The past ten days or so have been a little different though.
I’ve talked to a couple guys I haven’t spoken with in probably five or six years. I’d say “you know how it goes”, but I’m not sure everyone does know how it goes. Jarheads are an odd bunch…we get wrapped up in the workings and trappings of the environment we’re in and seem to lose touch with a lot of people who mean the world to us. It’s really sort of a shame but it’s just a given fact…we suck at staying in touch with people. BUT…because it’s a given fact there’s no animosity when we do hook back up. I guess we’ve just learned to set our expectations in each other pretty low over the years. 🙂
Those guys got in touch with me because of my absence from social media. My hiatus from Facebook has people looking for me….so I’m going to put this in writing….if someone asks, feel free to give them my contact information. I’m not in hiding….I’m just not actively participating.
I’ve got a lot of email about this blog from people I had no clue were even reading it. Then I got two emails about the blog from people I didn’t even know. It’s funny…I put this stuff out there and if nobody comments on it, I have no clue if anyone at all read what I posted. It’s not like the social media sites where you can tell how many views and thumbs-up you get just by glancing at the feed. There’s a data display attached to the website dashboard that shows me “bounce rates” and other statistics that I have no desire to understand, but for the most part I just write and post it and don’t really worry about the audience participation.
However….the peanut gallery (that’s you guys) is starting to ask questions. I answered these already in direct email traffic, but I don’t know who’s wondering the same things out there so I thought I’d just address the questions I’ve been asked to the whole crowd.
Do I mind if you share my posts on your social media? I don’t care. Actually it’s a little flattering. A lot of this has been flattering…I got told that someone printed out a post I wrote about shooting and passed it around his gun club…that may be the most famous I’ve ever been. For the sake of my own ego, I’m going to consider that “Being Published”. The local Baptist Pastor has been using my words to help spread his message too. Yeah…You read that right…a PASTOR using MY thoughts. I’m sure he edits the hell out of it…literally. 🙂 It’s all flattering though…I just started writing this blog to help me compartmentalize my thoughts and get stuff off my chest and now people are actually reading it.
So, Hey…If something I wrote made you smile…share the smiles. We don’t have enough of that in the world today. If you agree with a point I made in a post, feel free to share that too…just understand that the rest of the world may not agree with me and you may take a virtual beatin’ over sharing what I wrote.
I’ve been asked if I can add a “Share” button to the posts and that’s a damn good question. I’m sure someone smarter than me knows the answer to that. I set this site up about a year ago and once it was up and running I started adding to it, but I never really went back and changed any of the “technical” aspects of it. SO….I need to get back into that. It’s going to require some research on my part but I’ll see if it’s possible to accommodate that. In the mean time…I used to just cut and paste the link (URL) into a post on Facebook. It would “auto-populate” everything else into the post from there. Yeah, yeah, yeah….I get it….that’s not as easy as a “share” button. I’ll work on it.
Do you care if I have my friends that you don’t know subscribe to this? That email was sent to me from someone I don’t know personally…I shit you not. Anyway…absolutely anyone can subscribe to this catastrophe I call a blog. I have no idea who has subscribed and I have no idea how I could stop someone from subscribing to it if I wanted to. So….it’s an open door policy…the more the merrier.
The last question I received was concerning comments. When you post a comment I get an email and have to approve it before it posts on the site. If I don’t see that email until late in the evening it will seem like your comment drifted off into the farthest corners of the internet….but I’ll see it within the day you posted it and I’ll approve it. It didn’t used to be like that, but after what happened to me on Facebook I decided to screen everything before it’s added to the post. Positive or Negative…As long as it’s not hateful, I’ll approve it. I love an open exchange of ideas and if we’re not communicating we’re just kind of sitting stagnant in life.
In the spirit of communication…..if you want to discuss something I’ve written with me but not have the other three people who read this blog see it…feel free to email me.
Positive, constructive criticism can be emailed to jaybo.lives@myhillbillylogic.com
If you have negative or hateful comments to make, please email them to nancy.pelosi@us.congress.gov
Awwww…C’mon now….that was funny.
You can email anything to jaybo.lives@myhillbillylogic.com or the old faithful djibouti.jim@gmail.com
HEY….Be good to each other out there….the planet’s got enough assholes on it already.
And SMILE…dammit.
UPDATE: HEY….Look what I figured out! Share and Like Buttons at the bottom of the posts! They’ve made this so easy even I can figure it out!