The Journey So Far – Retirement Diary #5

Welcome to the latest retirement diary. In my last post, I discussed my goals. In the last month, I’d had 9 unique visitors to this site, but my goals are modest:

Learning Period
January 2025: 40 per month
January 2026: 100 per month

Content Push begins
January 2027: 600 per month
January 2028: 1400 per month
January 2029: 5,000 per month

I’m giving myself 1.5 years to reach 100 monthly visitors and 4.5 years to reach 5,000 monthly visitors. In 1996, I reached 500 subscribers to the email version of my daily humor blog within 8 months of launching. So why, in 19 months, am I only targeting 100?

1: I’m keeping things reasonable.

I may be on a “fixed income” at the moment, but it’s enough to maintain a middle-class lifestyle. I don’t need to hit aggressive goals with this project to bring in cash. Any money this makes (if any) will be a nice bonus. So I’m giving myself time to focus on the learning and up-skilling portion before I start generating “follow-worthy” content. Honestly, I might miss the target for January 2025 as I really have little to promote at the moment.

2: I’m still in “stealth mode.”

When I started bulmash.com’s prototype (“GBHP – Greg Bulmash’s Humor Page”) in 1995, I had a college degree in writing and a couple of years of stand-up and improv classes under my belt. I was ready to generate content. And I did. Within 1 year of launching, I had a content distribution deal and was prepping to launch The WASHED-UPdate on IMDb.

This time I’m relaunching bulmash.com at a time where I’m at least a year or two away from being ready to generate content with the level of regularity and quality I’d ask people to follow. And because of that, I’m not promoting it a lot, so I might not hit that 40 by January. I feel like I’ll have some content worth sharing next year, so reaching 100 uniques a month by 2026 seems more likely.

3: I’m doing something NEW

I have had success as a writer and humorist. As a musician and visual artist??? I have no idea whether I’ll be able to build a following there. Am I talented? I think so. I hope so. But I have to give myself enough time to get good to see if I actually do.

That may sound like false humility. It’s not. I think I can do this. I have to believe it’s possible or I wouldn’t be doing it. But I’m breaking new ground (for me). I’m pushing myself out of my comfort zone in ways I haven’t really in my career. Regardless of what I believe or think, I have to be realistic and understand that I may not get as good as I’m hoping or it may take me longer to get that good than I hoped.

4: It’s a three-legged stool

There are three legs to this…

  1. Entertain
  2. Inspire
  3. Teach

…in that order.

I have to get good enough to create content that is consistently entertaining. By doing so, I hope to inspire other creators. And in doing that, I hope to get good enough that they want to learn from me and I have a strong enough insight into my own process to be able to break it down and teach it.

5: I’m selfish

The 30th anniversary of my university graduation is in the next few days. I expect/hope to have 30 more. What am I going to do for the second half of my post-university life to make the world a better place? I chose this.

Probably sounds like bullshit, like something I’m making up to be noble. Nah. I could improve lots of lives by spending all my time working at a food bank behind the scenes and having few if any of the people I helped know who I am.

I don’t want to be an unsung hero. I want to be a well-known hero and this is the road I’m trying to navigate to get to that goal. I want to help people, but I want to have a ton of fun and satisfy my need to create at the same time, maybe make some money from it, maybe build a business into which I can recruit my sons. So rather than take a sure bet on helping people, I’m taking a big bet that I can do it while helping myself.

That’s selfish.

Let me explain. No, that is too long. Let me sum up.

In the end, I’m trying to start an amazing career as an independent artist and teacher, build a cadre of fans, and both inspire and teach new artists… because I’m selfish. But that’s okay, at least a little, right?

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