Floyd Allen Reflections
Two of my pages and one of my posts are all related to each other in the following manner :
[1]—My Home Page talks about what I will post about—which is, of course, subject to change without notice, but, hopefully, always in a good way;
[2]—My About Page ( this one! ) talks about me as a person—my vital statistics in life, with highlights of my imaginary accomplishments and the like; and
[3]—My Post “What I Don’t Post About…and Why“, which is, well, self-explanatory.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I—ABOUT ME
*A—CAUGHT OFF-GUARD
*B—Vital Stats : My Family—Traci, The Two Rebeccas, My Siblings And Parents
**1—My Wife, Traci
**2—Rebecca and Rebecca
**3—My Siblings
**4—My Parents
*C—Vital Stats : My Social Life
**1—My Friends
**2—Everyone Else
*D—Vital Stats : My Education and Livelihood
**1—The Old Way
**2—The New Way…?
***[a]—Completing the “Trinity”
***[b]—Blindly Poking Around in the Dark With “Shoot-From-The-Hip” Posts
***[c]—Finding A Mentor
***[d]—First Things First : Learn Both, the Administration of the Office and The Science and Art of How To Operate The Machinery
***[e]—The Futility of Being Clueless About Site Management Principles
*E—Conclusion
I—About Me
A—Caught Off-Guard
Me In My Basement
My name is Floyd Allen, and I’m a 57-going-on-58-year-old cancer survivor and hobbyist musician faced with a second life-challenging fork-in-the-road ( cancer, being the first, of course ) where I have to make a feast-or-famine decision as to “Which road am I going to follow? Which direction am I going to head toward next? “
My record for making the right choices is not encouraging.
In July 2016, my boss of 18 years closed his long-since-shrinking business for good, and I was among the only two employees left ( out of about 20 in our prime years ) who had to start looking for new jobs.
My layoff occurred after an 18-year “vacation” where I got complacent in my lot in life, when I was in no financial shape to be so lackadaisical toward the otherwise rapidly-approaching, and tenderly vulnerable senior citizen years where one is :
[a] far more likely to be dependent on assistance ( financial, physical, mental) ; and
[b] less likely to be autonomously independent.
Moreover, with what I have in the realm of retirement savings put away, and what social security benefits I’ll likely have coming, I will definitely be at someone’s mercy since I’m not likely to be an independent citizen.
In fact, I’m hoping not to live that long.
But……since I am still here….
I have to figure out how to make the best out of what limited time I have left on this planet.
Like everyone else, I have a “bucket list” of untried pursuits; but, in my case, that bucket list is much larger than any lists of accomplishments by me.
That’s not a good ratio, the way I see it.
I need to somehow change that, and as quickly as possible, albeit much later in life than where I should have made this same authentic attempt to find my telos, back when I was in my twenties.
So, here I am trying my hand at something I enjoy doing, but haven’t the slightest clue how to generate an income with these topics that I otherwise love to elaborate on.
Until I do discover that magic opportunity, I will continue to post them just for the enjoyment.
To see what topics that I’m likely to feature go to my Home Page.
To see a one-time list of topics I do not foresee me posting on, see my Post , “My Content : What I DON’T Write About…And Why“.
B—Vital Stats : My Family—Traci, The Two Rebeccas, My Siblings And Parents
1—My Wife, Traci
I’ve been married to my wife Traci for 13-going-on-14 years—it’ll be 14 years this July.
I met Traci when she was a teller at a bank I used to have an account with.
We’ve been together for 16 years, since March of 2005.
2—Rebecca and Rebecca
Traci has a daughter from a previous relationship, and she was named Rebecca, whose partner is named Curtis and they live in Kansas.
I also have a daughter from a previous relationship, and she, too, was named Rebecca; and she’s married to a man named “Joey” and they have two children : a son, “Walter”, who is 16, and a daughter, “Eva”, who is 14, and they all live in Wisconsin.
3—My Siblings
I started out with five siblings ( for a total of six of us ) and I now have two, for a total of three of us.
The oldest three : Gail, Tom, and Linda, have all passed on.
The three that are left are Nancy, Jim and myself—in descending age.
4—My Parents
Both of my parents ( Earl and Lucille ) have passed on, as well—my father passed in June of 1989; and my mother, 16 and a half years later in November of 2005
C—Vital Stats : My Social Life
1—My Friends
Both, my best friend, Jim, and my favorite musician to have jammed with, ( Danny, a drummer ) have both passed on; and the two brothers who lived next door to the house I grew up in, also have passed.
It’s starting to get a bit lonely in this world.
Although, I admit, that I still talk to my two friends who are brothers, Bill and Jerry, who’ve I’ve known since 1974 or 1975—and a lot of history there, too.
But take them out of the picture and I have absolutely no one left from my “roots” days.
2—Everyone Else
Everyone else is just someone I’ve known for less than two or three years : co-workers; temporary neighbors; musicians encountered, etc.
D—Vital Stats : My Livelihood ( From Parts Counter Clerk to……..Writer ? )
Having just spent 11 months being a pandemically-unemployed person whose unemployment benefits had run out five months earlier ( i.e., I had zero income for the past five months or 20-plus weeks ), I had plenty of time to evaluate various aspects of my life such as where I came from, and where it seemed I was going, and what I could do to change as much of that about my future as I could—and, as fast as I could, as well!
1—The Old Way
Although I did my undergraduate work in political science as my major and environmental studies as my minor ( thought I was going to save the world working for either the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] or some Rocky Mountained-based Forestry-related agency ), I pursued neither as an occupation.
In fact, I was nowhere near either field being a customer service/parts counter guy for the tools of the building trades market for the past 25 years, and as a janitor and an over-the-road truck driver for 16 and three years, respectively, before that.
Like many other people, none of my chosen fields have produced any current wealth or the future propects of a nest egg to retire in.
Hence, my search for a new “me”, and a “new normal” as far as daily routines and much-larger paychecks are concerned.
A “Version 2.0” of myself, if you will—albeit so late in life.
Warren Buffett
They say Warren Buffet didn’t make his first million until he was in his fifties.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll have the same luck ( hey, no laughing ) to cross that line in my fifties, too—since my sixties are only a couple years away ( I can’t believe how much of my life has slipped away into something I had not anticipated—in some ways, good ways; and others, not so good. But I digress. Anyway… ).
2—The New Way…?
The newest idea under my microscope right now is blogging or writing in some fashion.
But there so many different forms of media which require different forms of writing, of which I’m hoping I’m good enough to prosper in at least one of those areas.
But which one?
Or, better yet, which ones, if plural?
It could be a “needle-in-a-haystack” type of search without some type of guidance or hints from fellow wise ones.
[a]—Completing the “Trinity”
I do actually have an idea of one area, though, that I’m currently looking at right now, as I write these words, but I first need to finish this Trinity of Posts/Pages :
[1] My Home Page—what I do write about
[2] My About Page—all about me, myself & I; and
[3] my Post, “My Content : What I DON’T Write About…And Why“
These three documents are all connected in explaining who I am.
Once the “Trinity” is complete, I can move on.
[b]—Blindly Poking Around in the Dark With “Shoot-From-The-Hip” Posts
Then, I can test the waters with a post or two in the other areas and see what kind of responses I get.
I don’t want to jinx ( call me superstitious ) anything by “arrogantly” divulging too much, too soon, only to end up humiliatingly watching my project go “Hindenberg” on me and explode right before my very eyes.
But this approach here? This “Just-post-and-see-what-happens” approach?
It really is no different than scientific inventors blindly trying different experiments with different variables in an attempt to get the best results.
Hopefully, none of my experiments will “blow the house up”.
But that’s just me “shooting in the dark”, so to speak.
[c]—Finding A Mentor
But how much faster could I get up and running if I had some productivity-increasing guidance from an experienced wise-and-benevolent soul?
My guess? A lot faster!
So, it might be an appropriate decision to seek out a mentor to help get me up and running a lot sooner than if I blindly poked around in the dark, which is what I am doing.
But I haven’t the slightest clue how to go about finding a mentor, either!
I mean, where do I post my search?
What do I say in my ad?
“Kwai Chang Caine looking for his Master Po!”?
I intend to go from writing personal, introspective topics that currently pay zero in money, but truckloads of enjoyment in other ways, to hopefully money-earning blogs, which, I’m assuming, involves some form of marketing-oriented writing, a subject of which I am also pretty clueless about in its entirety as an academic discipline.
[d]—First Things First : Learn Both, the Administration of the Office and The Science and Art of How To Operate The Machinery
Imagine a person who considers himself a businessman, yet, doesn’t know how to do a deposit in the company’s business account; which keys unlock which doors; doesn’t even know where the light switches are, or where the main breaker box for the building’s electrical power is located or where the shutoff valve for the incoming water supply is; he doesn’t know how to boot up the computers for the day; doesn’t know where the sales forms are, or how to fill one out; doesn’t know the difference between the billing department and tech support, so to speak; doesn’t know diddley about anything.
You wouldn’t think of him or her as much of a “business owner”, would you?—being so clueless about 98 percent of the decisions that he or she makes with company-owned tools in their uninformed, untrained hands.
That’s exactly how it makes me feel as a “blogger” when I don’t understand even the most fundamental principles of site management.
How can I manage a client’s content, when I can’t even manage my own?
Until then, I have no business looking for clients if I don’t even understand the tools in my own toolbox.
[e]—The Futility of Being Clueless About Site Management Principles
Being clueless, a rat could wander in the wrong direction in a maze.
Humans don’t fare any better in their daily failures, and I am certainly no exception to that rule, that’s for sure.
In my case, my lack of understanding or comprehension of 90 percent of the commands on the menus in WordPress® and Bluehost® is tantamount to a blind and deaf person suddenly finding themselves at the controls of a rapidly-moving vehicle they’ve never been trained to use, and can’t use the visuals or audios to determine where they’re traveling, or how fast, just seconds away from certain disaster, as they inevitably crash into something mobile or stationary.
“Ideal” Clulessness
Theoretically, being clueless can be comical in a Three Stooges slapstick comedy kind of way—like in the picture on the right, where the rider is repeatedly spun in a circle, and never gets “bucked” off the mechanical bull”, so to speak.
That’s, at best, an “ideal” level of cluelessness —where the “rider” provides an ongoing stream of laughter and gets laughed with.
“Actual“ Clulessness
Instead, my mistakes would be more like the fiasco in the second animated-GIF labeled, ” ‘ Actual ‘ Cluelessness”, where the guy actually gets tossed off the machine, and the witnesses/readers, are laughing at the author, not with him—and in this case? The “him” is, well….. me and my site management skills. LOL.
I feel like such a caveman when I look at the WordPress ( and Bluehost) menus and all the commands they stand ready to execute if only I knew how ( and why ) to execute those commands.
E—Conclusion
So, that’s me : a techno-challenged, upper middle-aged man trying to re-invent himself at the “11th Hour” in life, not just out of financial necessity, but also because I’ve actually found something that I actually, truly enjoy!
I’m actually “into ” the writing scene—at least, as a concept for my new life, although I don’t actually know anyone in the “writer’s club”, and I wouldn’t know which crowd to hang out with once inside the party and mingling with other attendees.
My Site-Management Skills
I intend to do at least one post pertaining to my WordPress experience; and maybe one for my Blogger.com questions.
Otherwise, in the meantime, being clueless about site management concepts is, at best, ( like I’ve parodied with the animated GIFS above ) somewhat akin to not knowing how to use a floor buffer—and then attempting to use one…and I don’t want to be that guy.
At worst, it’s like being at the controls of a tank, and accidentally demolishing your own car—and I definitely don’t want to be that guy either.