RichardHarlos.com

When I chose this blog’s tagline—surveying the world in byte-size chunks—I was thinking it would give me ultimate flexibility to write about anything that happened to strike my fancy. I was right about that but that flexibility came at a price: a lack of focus.

By allowing myself ultimate freedom to survey the world, I sacrificed developing some kind of theme around which this blog could grow and develop. And true to the wisdom of others who have come before me, this lack of a theme has been a significant influence in determining who my readers are.

Was it for my readers that I wished to preserve this ultimate flexibility in choosing content to write about? Honestly, no; it was for myself. It allowed me to avoid a certain discipline of the mind by indulging my whims, whatever they may be. And now, a little over a year later, I’m finally learning the value of focusing my content on a theme: it’s all about your readers.

This lesson can be seen in the way specialty shops contrast with mega-mart stores. The mega-mart certainly has more variety in its content. The mega-mart carries more things and spreads them out over more space. Yet the mega-mart almost never establishes itself as the place to go for either quality or expertise; these are the domains of the specialty stores, the boutiques. Whether we’re talking about hunting equipment or cosmetics, the specialty stores carry more variety in a single theme, and generally offer more quality in both merchandise and customer service.

In this way, the boutiques develop a customer loyalty built upon quality and relationship rather than the mega-mart’s attraction of convenience and low-prices.

As a one-person blog, I was trying to participate as if I were a mega-mart and it’s just too ambitious a goal for me. Now if I were writing just for me, just to publicize my opinions without any aim of eventually supplementing my income through my writing, this would be just fine indeed. I love to think… to analyze… to discuss and, if necessary, to debate. The world, however, is too large for this blogger to absorb alone—at least to the degree that might satisfy a readership with a mega-mart interest in the world.

So over the next few days and weeks, this blog will be in a period of transition. The tagline may change a few times, and the content will be focusing more on human potential and wellness. There will still likely be the occasional off-topic post but for the most part, I’ve decided to focus less on criticizing the things “out there” that desperately need to be fixed and, instead, to focus more on the things that I can actually do something about—the things “in here”, that is to say, the things I can do to better myself and, ultimately, the things that others who are interested in bettering themselves may learn about and experiment with.

Maybe that needs to be a separate blog and this one, my name-sake, can stay as unfocused as always. I’m not sure of all the details yet but of one thing I am sure: I need to find a niche and focus on that if I’m to offer anything of value to, and expect any loyalty from, my readers.

So for all of you that have returned here to see what I’d write about next, I thank you for your loyalty. Though some of you may decide that this new theme isn’t your cup of tea, and may never return, in the long run I’m probably doing us both a favor by focusing a bit. Time will tell.

I’m very interested in any thoughts that you may have about this matter so, if you please, leave a comment and tell me what you think; thanks very much!

In any event, I want to wish you all a “happy Monday” because, well… because Mondays can be as happy or as miserable as we expect them to be. Half-empty or half-full; whatever you believe is true—for you!