Where's Monster Dad? (aka: 2019 State of the Blog Address)

Okay, so this kind of feels more like a social media post or update than a real blog post, but I just felt like I needed to put this out there--even if it's not the standard kind of fare I would prefer to be writing and posting.

Anyway, I seem to keep intending to write more often and more consistently. And then the posts just seem to grind to a halt. About a year ago I really thought I was committing myself to write more. And the second half of 2018 was indeed the most "successful" era of Monster Dad in about five or six years. 2019 started off the right way. I was still putting out a couple posts per month (not the four or so I'd LIKE to be putting out there, but still kinda-sorta okay). And the ideas and intention are still there. I think about writing nearly every day. Old ideas keep bubbling up from the past and new ones still pop into my head on a regular basis. I just don't seem to be able to find the time to sit down and make them real.

A big part of the reason for this is the same old story about how I'm "suffering" from the success of my YouTube channel (gschultz9) where I mostly review military rations. It's a VERY different format than what is featured on this blog, but the simple fact that there are a lot more viewers and subscribers on that channel, there is a lot more opportunity to interact with the subscribers and, well, that channel actually generates a little bit of income by making a modest amount of money via the ads that run on the videos causes that "creative outlet" to demand more of my time and energy.

I get caught up with all that's involved with keeping the YouTube channel current and relevant. Next thing I know I look at Monster Dad and realize that a WHOLE MONTH has passed since my last post! Despite the amount of time, energy and work that goes into filming, editing, posting and tracking the performance of a new video on the YouTube channel, I actually seem to find it easier to do all of that than it is to simply sit down at the keyboard and pound out a new blog post. Last year I mentioned that I was going to try to put out more content here by (even if only occasionally) posting quick and short posts that would look more like social media posts than full blog posts. There's nothing saying I CAN'T do that (a lot of others do, and it's certainly the flavor of the day in this short-attention-span-theater world we're living in). But when it got right down to it, I simply couldn't seem to get myself to throw quick and short posts up here (stuff like a photo I saw online with just a caption or something to that effect). I'm certainly not a professional writer, but whether it shows or not I've always put a lot of thought into my posts here. I always want to tell a story while hopefully being coherent and making some sense. That leads to some lengthy posts that I could certainly get away with making a LOT shorter and possibly still getting the point across, but it's just not my style. And in the end this IS my blog, right?

In addition to the envious "problem" of having to deal with a somewhat successful YouTube channel I'm also still having to deal with some other "life stuff" that also ends up taking precedence over blog writing. I don't want to bore the reader with all the details of all of this "life stuff", but a lot of it has to do with my continuing search for a new job after my extended time spent raising our Little Monsters for the past number of years. It's actually something that I think might be worth writing about itself--even if some aspects of it are kind of on the depressing side.

Obviously I'm writing this because this continuing difficulty I'm finding in getting more posts out there is bothering me. But I do want to ensure anyone who might happen to be a faithful reader (a pretty endangered species here as I've lost most of my Google cache over the past five or six years due to my lack of regular writing) that I'm STILL here and I STILL have a lot of ideas for posts that (I feel) are good and worth writing. And, yes, I'm STILL planning on writing more often...eventually. If you've stuck around this long, please continue to be patient with me. I truly do see myself as a regular blog writer (even if being a blog writer isn't as much of a "thing" as it used to be when I started doing this). I'm realizing that even just writing this little update feels like a positive thing. It still feels good to write and post something. I want to have that feeling with more worthy posts on a more regular basis. We shall see what the second half of 2019 brings to the Monster Dad world...