The End of the Road

It's a sad day here at Mike’s Gone Fishin’ for today I must say goodbye to you all.  With a heavy heart, and with great reluctance, I plan to pull the plug on the blog, effective immediately.  This will be my final post. I’m sorry.

When I retired, I thought that keeping a blog would be a fun thing to do, giving me a creative outlet while keeping me in touch with the I/T industry from which I’d departed.  I reasoned that a blog would also allow me to incorporate my rediscovered love of the long rod and share my adventures in the outdoors with whoever might be interested.

And, for a couple of years, that’s how it went.  I’ve made great friends through this media and had some terrific times, on and off the water.  I’ve had an outlet for my emerging literary efforts and a playground with which to try many new things - photography, poetry, serious essay.  Folks from around the world have visited this blog and the fishing opportunities that have been offered would take a lifetime to complete.  I have been blessed by your response.

But the pressure to keep it going has become too much.  The tail has been wagging the dog.  The drive to keep visitor counts high has pushed into the front of my brain and pushed aside my real responsibilities. My perspective has been skewed.

Google Analytics is on speed dial.

The need to reach more and more folks has become an unhealthy obsession, driving me to increasingly outrageous contet.  In the past four posts alone I have channeled cartoon skunks, photoshopped bizarre and unearthly images, advocated life-threatening forays when safety is close at hand, and told my wonderful friends to shut the hell up. Are those the posts of a sane individual? Of course not.

It’s been a steady decline.  I’ve become fixated on my number of Followers, the blogrolls that mention me, and my failure to be an OBN Featured Blogger of the Week. I’ve spiraled into despair with the constant need for market media groups, test readers, detailed content analysis, and far-flung photo shoots.  When I close my eyes I see graphs of pageviews, bounce rates, time on site. I've even considered Twitter. Yes, I’m a blogging puddle of goo.

So, to save my health, and my sanity, I’m giving it up.  I’ll miss you guys, but it’s for the best.

Don’t worry about me, though.  I’ll be fine.  In fact, I’ll be great. I'll still be writing, but in the genre that I’ve secretly coveted since childhood. Romance novels. Heaving bosoms, lost loves found, paperback legends.  In fact, I already have a five-figure advance from Harlequin for my proposed manuscript Matilda of the Moors: Aussie Passion in the Scottish Highlands. Watch for it under the pen name Michelle Gönphisíone.  It’ll be great!

See you on the newsstands.

Oh, and Happy April Fools Day!