My best thinking time happens when I’m away from home. It’s where I can compile my thoughts and review my path forward. For several years, that place away from home has been our holiday paradise, the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.
As I sit and write this, we are enjoying the second half of this month-long visit. We’ve already enjoyed two weeks at Faro Park in a frontline villa with nothing but the sound of the sea to break the silence. Two days ago, we started our second phase, which was two weeks in Playa Honda, 30 miles away from the first location and near the capital of Arrecife.
I’ve been unable to do as much writing as intended. Unfortunately, I caught a cold from Jane two weeks ago, which has already turned into a chest infection. So I’m coughing, sniffling and getting through handkerchiefs like they’re going out of fashion!
I had only just got over a chest infection before we left home, so the embers were within me and ready to be relit. Anyway, I digress as always.
In the words of Dragon’s Den Richard Ballentine, here’s where I’m at. The new website is progressing slowly. Cosmetic changes have been made to some of the designs, simplifying it to make it more compatible across all devices. Some content has been transferred in from other platforms, but that is proving a bit of a chore using this one laptop on a slow internet connection. I’m managing to write and produce new content to keep to my weekly schedule, but even that is proving harder than expected, with having to use the old Substack platform to promote everything.
Time is closing in on my official retirement date of July 11th when radical changes to my work schedule have to be in place. I have a bit of a dilemma I’m trying to get my head around. Fifty per cent of me want to close the Facebook group for good. It really serves little purpose. It is only one or two of the hundred or so members that contribute anything to it. The rate of turning members into website viewers is around 1%, so the promotion of my new articles doesn’t work.
Somewhere between now and the end of the year, I will announce the closure of the group which, for me, is one less negative thing to worry about.
Within the next month or so, I plan to stop using the Substack platform altogether, which will mean the end of the twice-weekly newsletters to the subscribers. At this time, the click-through rate from the emails to the linked pages is under 25%, so that’s 75% of subscribers who are not participating in reading or visiting the website.
Since the website launched, the Google stats on the site reveal that there have been just 64 visitors to the website, with the best day seeing 9. Hardly a glowing success so far!
Comments and feedback have been sparse as well. So, there are no incentives showing for me to drive this project any faster or further. I will do as I always planned: retire on my birthday and cease with all schedules.
Of course, new content will be added, as and when I can, and I will continue to build this website into the foreseeable future. I just won’t be wasting time and mental energy trying to get followers or interest from others.
This is what I love about getting away from the office in Shevington. I can step back from the woods and see the trees. I can plan ahead more clearly and put things into perspective with a reality and path ahead.
Part of this planning is to please my partner Jane, who honestly is sick and tired of me having to work so many hours night and day on my mediumship work. It’s hard to keep justifying spending time on holidays sitting at a laptop trying to write material for an invisible audience that’s so muted.
Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy it when I create content for others to enjoy. But it does become hard work when the audience is unresponsive and probably not interested anyway. I sometimes feel like a speaker stood on speaker’s corner in London with thousands of people passing by with no interest whatsoever. What’s the point?
In summary, the Facebook group will close in the coming months. The weekly emails will end. Work will continue silently on this website until I have completely brought all of my years of work together in one archive.
Meanwhile, I can see the sea out of this room door. Jane is getting some beautiful sun on her swollen ankles and we’re having a wonderful extended break away from home.