I’m going to let you all in on a little secret: this website is a lot more than just a weekly internet radio show called Wailing with Wing Side Up.
If you read the about me section of the site or this blog, you will soon find out that the website all began as an extension of my weekly column called “Wing Side Up” that got it’s start in Dick Beebe’s award winning MARC Times Racing News back in 1989.
Wing Side Up, the website has become, (maybe more by chance than design), a sort of media clearing house for the entire supermodified division. Sometimes it’s hard to define what purpose each part has, especially lately with all the stuff going on that is keeping the show from being live, but I’ve come to understand that the audio is probably just as important as the writing now and that it too, has become an extension of the original column as well.
So, I started thinking that even though we may not have a “LIVE” audio webcast, maybe I could dig back into the whole podcasting thing and have some sort of audio up on site and people would still be interested enough to come hang out. Trouble is, I’d pretty much forgotten how to podcast.
Time to go back to the books so to speak and I dug in and started researching how to podcast, what was needed, what recording settings were best, how to host them, etc, etc.
After a day of digging through a myriad of technical data and unattainable realities, I finally found a resource that I could relate to. Franklin McMahon.
I don’t figure we really have all that much in common, other than the fact that he is a photographer, (I mean a real one-the kind that gets paid to take pictures of hot chicks), and a writer. Now there’s a lot more to talk about when it comes to Franklin McMahon, so watch for that in a later post, what I want to say about him here is that I got a lot more out of his website then just his awesome abilities as a podcast producer. Under his blog name the headline “Media Artist Secrets – Creative Career Inspiration” appeared to me so I started down the rabbit hole to see what it was all about.
From Inspiration to Another
One of his posts mentioned a guy by the name of Tim Ferris. Now, once in a while, as hard as it may seem to believe, I do stray outside of my world of beer guzzling and F-bombs to read or learn more about, shall we say, enlightened ways of living life-hey even Caligula was considered somewhat cultured for his time right?
Tim Ferris is the guy that wrote “The 4 Hour Work Week ” and is now just as much of an inspiration to me as he is to millions of others including Franklin McMahon. I watched the entire video (you can see it below because I think it’s worth watching even if you don’t blog) of a talk Ferris gave to the 2009 San Francisco WordCamp called “How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself”
“Hot diggity-damn,” I thought to myself. “Finally someone that gets what I’m screaming to my lovely Marketing and PR Director, Annamarie.” Let me tell you something, this writing shit ain’t easy. I do it for therapy, yet often end up feeling like I need a prescription for Prozac to counter the depression over perfection that writing often drives me into.
After taking a ton of notes and stopping and rewinding the video, I’m pretty sure that I’m breaking many of the rules he talks about, but I’m trying to get the creative juices flowing and this is the first step.
The fact of the matter is that ever since I started writing my column for MARC Times Racing News, I have always struggled with writer’s block. Of course sometimes that was due to the fact that I had a deadline that didn’t coincide with my desire to stay at a racetrack long after the checkered flag flew for the racer and should have signaled the end of beer drinking and the start of roadtripping.
I don’t claim to be a fantastic composer of literary prose, and I often go on, (like now), much further than I need to in order to get my point across. I guess sometimes it’s just hard to type out what my twisted mind is thinking. I stopped writing weekly and would only submit to Dick’s paper once in a while. I found out when he passed way this year that, much to my surprise, he really liked my writing, except for having to cut it down to a manageable size so he’d have room for the race results.
I’ve struggled with this whole blog thing for some time. I start, I get rolling, but then I never seem to be able to keep it going. I lose people left and right, it hurts the brand and my credibility and it lets my readers down. Annamarie keeps telling me that since the audio is down I need to bang out some “wicked good blogs.” Again, easier said than done and one thing that I did learn from the Tim Ferris video was that it’s not nearly as cool to just hop on the bandwagon and chase topics but to blog with passion about things that you care about and have staying power.
I learned even more when I went to Ferris’ blog. I saw design features that were exactly like he talked about in the video that make it easier for a reader to enjoy what you write. I found a cool new app for embedding interesting material into the blog without making the reader leave the page. I was inspired to once again tackle the design and content of the blog you are reading.
What It All Means
What you are reading today, (if you made it this far), is the beginning of a new blogging/writing mindset for me. The first thing I’ve done, (since I can’t seem to find anyone who wants to design one just for me), is find a few themes that I think will be easier on the eyes and more user friendly. I’ll warn you, it may change right before your eyes as I play around with this thing to tweak it out.
I would suspect that it will be renamed here in the short future to be less confusing. I’ll probably call it The Wing Side Up Blog or The Blog of Bobby G. so don’t be alarmed if you see a change up top.
Starting real soon, you are going to see more guest writers. At first they will be right here on this blog under the “Guest Writer” topic. Eventually they might move to a linked blog. I’m still not real sure how I want to make it work, I just know I’d like to have some more content for you all to dig into.
My plan of attack is to do my best to give you at least two blogs a week. They may be a lot shorter than this, they may be a bit longer. It might not always be about supermodified racing or the supermodified world, but it will most always have something that can relate back to how, I believe, we can implement certain character traits in our daily lives that will in the long run help the DIVISION prosper and survive.
I’m no saint and I’ve never claimed to be, nor am I completely sold on other human beings who make money selling books being the source of our salvation. So if it sounds hypocritical for me to say some of the stuff you may read from here on out, so be it. I can’t please everyone all the time, but if you keep coming back, you’re going to find that I’m grasping new to me concepts of success.
This whole life should be about how we push ourselves to continue to step further outside of our comfort zones, especially when challenged with difficult times. In that sense, I don’t think supermodified racing is all that much different.
What do you like best about the blog?
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