I hope everyone is doing fine out there! If only intentions were everything… Some people are certainly suffering from a direct impact to their family, and others grieve the sheer number of lives lost.
I have no problem with the quarantine, but I marvel at the panic many people exhibit when they stockpile toilet paper. At the time I write this, Coronavirus has killed nearly 26,000 people in the USA and over 125,000 people world wide. Each death is a tragedy, so I am glad the word is taking action to prevent further deaths.
What confuses me is that during this same time period the annual flue (influenza) has killed between 24,000 and 62,000 people. In 2019, influenza killed more than 34,000 people and in 2018, influenza contributed to the deaths of more than 61,000 people! Why didn’t that hit the news with the same vigor?
We have a vaccine for influenza, yet many people refuse to take it. Perhaps it is because we are used to people dying of the flu anonymously in private? Don’t get me started on heart disease. Cardiovascular disease kills more than 645,000 people every year, but since that is a self-inflicted disease, I guess there is no reason to do anything?
But I digress…
My family and I continue to muddle along. Our health is fine, our wallets are anemic, and our future has more questions than answers. Just like almost everyone.
Why has it been so long since the last blog?
In part, I have been busy. First I started becoming more busy with paid writing gigs.
Since August, I have been writing the Cybersecurity Blog for Ideal Integrations and their subsidiary Blue Bastion. I enjoy keeping up with technology, so this has been quite enjoyable.
In January, I picked up a project writing Cybersecurity policy documentation. While the team of people I worked with were great, you can only extract so much enjoyment from writing pseudo-legal documents for End Point Policies, Incident Response Policies, and the like.
In December, I also began filling in as a substitute teacher. My very first assignment was at the continuation high school for the district and I met my student’s parole officer before any student showed up for class! Quite an educational day for me.
Teaching can be quite rewarding and quite fun. It is also eye-opening. I’m sure I’ll blog more about this in the future.
Since July of last year, I have been doing the bookkeeping for an internet referrals fee entrepreneur and in January I became the first bookkeeper for an affiliated partner. Creating the accounting system from scratch for his partner has been quite the challenge!
As a side benefit, I see what it takes to become a successful referral revenue partner. Unfortunately, I don’t want to play that game. To be successful requires creating niches specifically for products and creating a separate website and URL and ad campaign for each of them.
To be successful requires hiring an army of workers in 3rd world countries to post content and manipulate the google formula with paid back links and by writing about things I don’t care about.
So that type of blogging is not for me. I’ll keep writing for myself and my baker’s dozen of readers (which is probably a half-dozen at this point). It is a bit selfish, but I don’t have the nature to sell products in which I have no passion. I’ll leave that up to others.
I do have plans for quite a few blogs. I’ll stick to my reviews, memes, and investing. Possible a few teaching stories under memes because kids are so damn funny.
It won’t be four months before I post my next blog. I’m shooting for two per month for the next few months. Maybe by then the restaurants will be back open and I won’t have to cook so much! Of course, as I type this, my daughter walks by and offers to buy Chipotle for the family for dinner. I’m already a liar. If only intentions were everything…