Bittersweet. Good you're getting this burden off your shoulders though. Keep trucking.
After seeing your T Times with Noah and Nick, it appears that you sort of perversely enjoy the identity of being bad at marketing. Maybe it's a friendly means of highlighting their strength compared to yours. Not sure.
Unclear whether the weakness even matters anymore since you might be done focusing on earning, though near the end of this post it looks like it might be ripe for improvement.
Maybe Noah can help you if you threaten to keep his fancy pants watch.
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Bojack
To be honest Tynan, you've come across as a know it all and a bit of a narcissist for a while, now. Your site used to be about cool adventures, but now it's just an advice column, trying to advise readers on how to do anything and everything.
Even name dropping (in a way) that you know the creator of WordPress? And another blog platform emailed you after it failed? Who cares? How is that relevant at all?
It comes across in your gear posts too, harping on about how you know this person or that. The blog has shifted completely away from the stories of a cool dude doing cool things and writing about it... And having a conversation with his readers.
And now it's just a place to stroke your own ego. It's sad. I used to be such a big fan, but you don't even seem like a person anymore. You've gone back to being a social robot, but instead of espousing PUA things, it's now all this weird preaching, sepf-aggrandising rhetoric that is posted because you want to post.
The writing quality has dropped considerably, it all feels so impersonal, and as if you're just talking into a mirror. Bragging to your reflection, and thinking "yeah, this is what people want to hear."
You remind me of Patrick Bateman a bit in American Psycho in that regard. Mixed with Mr Peanut Butter from Bojack Horseman, who seems so far from being a personable person.
Not moving on from Sett is just another symptom of all that.
I don't think you're this kind of weird, one-way, one note guy in real life. Can't you put yourself out there on your blog like who you are offline? Instead of being a budget Tony Robbins?
I hope so. I miss that Tynan.
Tynan
I'm replying to this because I think it's probably meant to be constructive, even though it feels a bit like an attack.
One thing to consider is that I've been writing for almost 20 years now. 40 year old me is a lot different than 20 year old me, so I can't write about the same stuff that I used to. I'm just not climbing radio towers and going out to clubs every night. And though my life is a lot better now than it was then, in many aspects it's less exciting. I'm sure that translates to some extent.
I think it's a little weird to be accused of name dropping because I feel like I go way out of the way not to do it. I've known Matt from WordPress for 10 years and this is probably the first time I've mentioned him (and not even by name), because I don't want to build my own reputation on top of anyone else's. When I was thinking about what blogging platform to move to I favored WordPress because I met Matt while I was building Sett and he was really supportive and gave good advice, whereas another major platform came in like vultures when we failed. Seems like a reasonable factor to me and I feel like I explained it in the post with the least possible name-dropping.
The blog isn't a place for me to stroke my ego. Believe me or not, but it just doesn't move the needle in that regard. Maybe I do have too big of an ego, but it's pretty much all self-generated and has nothing to do with posting. My life would be a lot easier if I didn't write this blog and the main reason I do it is to try to give back because my life is a lot better thanks to my readers. Think about how little I do to promote it or monetize it. Once it's not useful to people, I'll pack it up. I did a survey earlier this year because I was considering shutting it down and hundreds of people asked me not to.
I agree somewhat that the quality has dropped, honestly. I'm not as hungry as I used to be, and I have fewer topics that I'm bursting at the seams to write about. This is also complicated by the fact that these days some of the big factors in my life are my marriage, my family, and financial stuff and I have limited willingness to write about any of them.
Probably no point in defending myself against being called a narcissist because even a narcissist would argue that he isn't one.
All that said, I'm 100% open to ideas for stuff you'd like me to write about. I write a mix of stuff I just want to get out there and stuff people ask me about.
Tynan
Interesting observation. I don't think it's true, but it might be so I'm going to reflect on it a little bit more. I try to highlight weaknesses I have, because I think otherwise it's easy to come off a little too know-it-all, and I definitely like to highlight my friends' strengths because that's a part of what I love about them!
I think at earlier points in life I thought I was so good that I didn't need marketing, but Sett and other projects proved me wrong. I suspect that in my future I won't need to do much marketing, but who knows for sure?