Category: Promotion

Reset button

Listen to this post:

I have been retired, for the most part, for 15 months. I still do about 10 hours weekly of clerical work for the last day job. Actually, I never had a “day job”; pretty much every job I ever had required working nights and/or weekends. And come to think of it, I haven’t worked a regular 40-hour week in 10 years.

When my position was eliminated (“Nothing personal, it’s a financial decision”), it was my full intention to work for myself from that moment on. I declared myself a full-time author and started an online “newspaper” for the local news desert southeast of my home. After four months a paper on the other side of the bay decided to recruit me for their open editor’s job, and they were so eager to fill the position that they agreed to let me work 28 hours a week so that I could maintain my online newspaper on the side.

Truth be told, my side hustles never brought in enough revenue to pay the bills. Social Security and the 28-hour job kept the lights on. But I really enjoyed the four-ish years that the online news site survived. I was filling a void and making my own way.

I was also stalling. If I really wanted to be a full-time author when I grew up, taking on two news-gathering jobs was an excuse not to grow up. 

I retired 50 years to the day after I started my first full-time job. For these past 15 months, technically, I have been what I wanted to be when I grew up: A full-time author, with a part-time clerical job to help with groceries. Funny thing about growing up: It seems I don’t wanna.

Monday always has been a good day for a reset, and I write this Sunday evening with my finger poised over that button. Will this be the week that I finally start being a full-time author in practice as well as in theory? The fact that I wrote it as a question, not as a declaration, is telling.

I know me. And if you’ve followed this blog, you know me, too. I’ve made declarations before. The first time I declared I was going to become a full-time author, the goal was my birthday in March 1990. I’m currently two-thirds through a novel that I once declared I would publish by the end of 2021. And so I’m going to leave it as a question and not a declaration like, “Yes! From this day forward I am a full-time author!”

But keep an eye on me for me, please. Feel free to ask how my new book or next album is coming, as politely or as rudely as you wish. You don’t even have to be interested in reading or listening to them; just receiving the question will motivate me. At least I hope it does.

Being accountable to someone is a good motivation. I’m planning to have a spaghetti dinner at Mary’s house this afternoon, and my goal is to read her what I’ve written today. That seems to be a good way to reset my brain and motivate me; we’ll see how that works.

If pressing the reset button does work, and the good Lord willing, from this day forward I will be an actual full-time author. The thought both excites and frightens me.

Listen to this

Listen to this post:

The on-again, off-again experiment is on again. Since Aug. 1, you have the option to listen to me providing a dramatic reading of this daily visit. Audio is the fastest-growing segment of the book market, so it behooves me to encourage you to start listening to me.

It’s not like I’m new to this. The first two decades or so of my career was in audio, specifically radio newscasting, and I’m told I have a pleasant enough voice, so why not? 

And the sound of my words can give you a fuller understanding of what I’m trying to say. How many times has someone misunderstood a text you sent because they couldn’t hear your tone of voice?

For a long time I called myself a “wordsmith and podcaster,” but it’s been a while since I assembled an actual podcast. It was fun to put together a show, but as a one-man operation it’s also tough to maintain a regular schedule. This, on the other hand, is a five-to-ten minute add-on to the daily blog. As a bonus, as a literal read-through, it’s an extra chance to proofread my work before it goes out into the great beyond.

In the past I’ve tried this for a little while and then lost interest when not many people took advantage of the opportunity to hear me reading these words. And maybe the same thing will happen this time around, but I think I’ll stick with it this time. For the most part I’m just doing a straight reading, no extra frills or production values, so what you see on the page will be what you hear — although maybe I’ll add some bells and whistles if I get bored. 

So for an extra five minutes or so of effort, I can offer something to people who’d rather listen to someone reading to them. Win-win, as they say.

Go ahead, press the “play” button and give it a try. At the very least you’ll find out what I sound like, or if you listened to much radio in northeast Wisconsin 30 or so years ago, maybe you’ll even say, “Oh yeah, that guy.” 

I have another book in me

Listen to this post:

If you pay attention to such things, you may have noticed I added a widget to the front page a week or two ago with this artwork and a caption that says, “My next book.” I am 95% sure that I will stick with that title, although I suspect the cover will need some tweaking before it gets into your hands (unless, of course, enough of you say, “That cover is gorgeous as is, I can’t wait to hold it in my hands”).

And about three weeks ago, for the first time, I wrote a blog post specifically designed to lead into the rest of the essays I’m collecting for the book. “What I Came to Say” summarizes the themes I’ve been writing about especially during the last three years. I have gathered about 150 or so reflections about each of these themes and am in the process of organizing them into sections. The Streak is in there — this today is #2,196 if you’re keeping track — as well as my retirement from the day job, adjusting to life without Red and my renaissance with Mary, ruminations about solstices, what my golden retrievers keep teaching me, my efforts to encourage you by trying to encourage myself, the ongoing struggle to avoid being sucked into the constant political warfare that tempts us daily, and, of course, the main thing I have come to say: Love God, love your neighbors, and we are all neighbors.

This book will be a little different in that I am not choosing the contents all by myself. A small handful of readers have begun, on their own, looking back into my archives to add a “Like” to things I wrote some time ago, and I’ve been paying special attention to what they’ve found. It feels like a friend combing through my files and saying, “How about this one, Warren? There’s some good thought here.” 

And the decision to pick 150 posts is a new record for me. Most of my blog collections have fewer than a hundred entries. I love How to Play a Blue Guitar, but it has only 24 stories, poems or reflections. My last book, See the World!, has 72 essays inside. So this puppy will add a bit of quantity to the quality.

It’s still my intention to publish at least one more book this year in addition to this one, but this one is the one that’s rounding the last turn and heading down the home stretch, so it is the first I am calling to your attention. This is the book I am most confident will be ready for you to put under the tree for that loved one who says, “Please, dear, I want a new Warren Bluhm book for Christmas.”

I will give you a heads up when it comes available for pre-order. And here is a handy place to go for anyone you know who would like more than one of my books.