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The entire AirPigz staff is feeling a bit stuck in the mud these days
The experiment pointed toward 'avgeek world domination' known as AirPigz began exactly five years ago today. Happy Birthday? Well, it's been a long and difficult journey for everyone here at avgeek central, which of course means just me since there isn't any staff here. I wish there was, and in fact that was always the plan, but it's just never come together for that to happen. So, for right now I'm just gonna say it like this: Birthday!
Being a one-man-operation is a huge pain... especially when the operation doesn't make enough money in a year to pay for the trip to OSH and a trip to Reno. And I sleep in the car and eat cheap on those trips! That means I have to work a day-job to support posting my regularly scheduled avgeekery. No surprise there as there aren't very many people who make a real living running a blog, but it's become a lot more difficult in the last two years for me. My day-job is as a ceramic tile installer and I work alone there too. Work was almost nonexistent when I started AirPigz in late 2008 but these days I'm constantly busy doing a very physically demanding job. I'm tired, worn down, and wearing out.
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Like Freddy Flameout, I'm not giving up yet! (photo: ilbasso via hobbytalk.com)
AirPigz traffic remains strong with over 50,000 page views each month and well over 30,000 unique visitors each month, but I seem stuck in the mud. Lack of time and resources make it almost impossible to create more and/or better content, and growth well past these numbers just doesn't seem to be happening otherwise. More important is that I don't get a lot of feedback which makes me wonder a lot these days if all this effort matters at all. Add to that the fact that I have just emerged from the crushing financial crisis that ruled my life these past 5 years and I find myself wanting to sleep a lot. That part of my life was been a long and bloody war, and I feel shellshocked.
To keep the pig alive I wind up working on posts before work (like right now), sometimes during lunch, often in the evening, and very often late at night. For a while that's a lot of fun (for people like me anyway), but after several years of it, with no real income and not much feedback, it becomes a heavy load. It's one I'm still willing to carry, but I can see there will have to be changes for this to continue well into the future. Any normal, sane person would have given up on this a long time ago!
As a young kid I had a plastic model of Freddy Flameout in my room that my dad built. I always thought it was cool just because it was so crazy, but now I see there's a lesson to be learned: don't give up. So I'm not giving up, just trying a little public complaining (aka honesty) instead to see if it makes me feel better : )
I hope you have a great avgeek day!
