One of the best parts of blogging is connecting with strangers. Sometimes, they leave thoughtful comments or share my posts on social media, spreading my ideas to new audiences.
It’s exciting to meet readers in real life who were inspired by something I wrote. Their enthusiasm and shared insights motivate me to keep blogging.
Blogging creates a ripple effect of connection, learning, and inspiration.
I wanted to start blogging about traumatic brain injuries, but the subject was too depressing.
So I changed the subject.
NY Giants Were My Favorite Team!
I enjoyed blogging about The New York Giants, my favorite team, a dozen years ago. Eli Manning is my favorite professional athlete. He won two Super Bowls during the last minute. Besides his athletic ability, he never complained. Eli led the league in sacks once. But he never complained about it.
Unfortunately, the New York Football Giants are one of the worst men’s professional sports teams in 2025.
The Giants hired coach Brian Daboll because the team won six games in a row and qualified for the playoffs. The New York Giants only won a single home game during the 2024-2025 season, but the team rehired Coach Daboll for another season.
NFL Is More Than Games
I also don’t relate to the NFL anymore. The media coverage of players kneeling during the anthem and a player’s girlfriend’s political opinions is too much for me.
My late wife Jayne and I attended many New York Giants home games from 1981 to 1985. Costs were reasonable, fewer regulations, and no protests. The season was also shorter. Nobody had to travel to Europe.
The current season is too long, and fewer games are on regular broadcast channels. I’m not ordering the NFL Network or Amazon Prime to watch the New York Giants football games.
The Rise and Fall of Bear Grylls
Bear Grylls inspired me to keep blogging about his survival adventures. He parachuted into remote jungles and scorching deserts, with only a knife, water bottle and flint. Sadly, he turned out to be fake.
I wrote most of my 50 articles about Bear Grylls before a “survival consultant”, revealed that he helped Mr. Grylls fake parts of the “Man vs. Wild” television show.
Did he really fall off a 9,000-foot mountain in Antarctica?
Despite his flaws, 21st-century role models don’t have to be perfect. The Scout Association selected Bear Grylls to be the UK Chief Scout in July 2009.
Grylls served as Chief Scout for 15 years, until September 2024.
The Greatest Story Ever Told: An Eyewitness Account
No, he wasn’t there. Bear Grylls crossed the line with propaganda. He said the mother of Jesus was a frightened Palestinian girl. Worse, Mr. Grylls wrote a book full of lies, pretending to be a historian. The worst part is that he now portrays himself as a devout Christian. Devout people of any religion, don’t brag about it.
The Greatest Story Ever Told: An Eyewitness Account is supposed to be published in April 2025. It will be interesting to see if editors revise his book or if it’s withdrawn. The publisher is Hodder Faith, now part of Hachette UK, one of the largest publishing groups in the UK.
WordPress Blogging: From Innovation to Disappointment
My life improved after I learned about WordPress and PHP programming to create this blog. Would you like to customize WordPress? The Man in the Arena, by Carl Alexander, offers fantastic tutorials for WordPress, PHP and software development. Carl explains many complicated subjects in simple language with clear examples.
I’ve lived in several cities since I discovered WordPress in 2007. Everywhere I lived, I met nice people who needed help with their WordPress websites.
After I learned the PHP for WordPress, it helped me get several jobs, including as the “PHP Help Desk” for an Internet Service Provider. I gave back to the community, devoting hundreds of hours of time to my Quick Mail WordPress plugin.
WordPress Stopped Being Fun
Unfortunately, I lost interest in WordPress development after they introduced the Gutenberg editor. I lost the ability to download WordPress. I had to build it. After I built it, I had to disable most of the new features. I had to monitor new releases to block new features.
I’m happy to learn new features.
But it takes six months to understand the React programming language and block themes, with no benefits.
Block Widgets
I used a tutorial to make a block widget for a client. Creating a standard widget is straightforward and takes about an hour. Creating a block widget is like launching a space shuttle. I struggled to follow the tutorial, and I did not finish the block widget.
Only one person out of about 20 blogging clients since 2018, ever used the block editor. She wanted the widget. Client refused my offer of a shortcode as an alternative.
Threats Close Theme Businesses
WordPress encouraged everyone to find alternatives by threatening to remove the “Classic Editor” in 2021, then 2022.
WordPress also put many independent theme developers out of business. Most new WordPress themes are based on Elementor or another page builder. Because Gutenberg’s interface is painful.
Gutenberg offers no benefits to anyone, except a job for its developers, who may have been “donated” to WordPress.
Where Did My Plugin Go?
I created the Quick Mail WordPress plugin in 2014.
Quick Mail helped me send an unpublished post draft from the WordPress Dashboard to my proofreader.
My Quick Mail plugin had a perfect 5.0 rating on the WordPress plugin repository.
Unfortunately, WordPress suspended my account because I included a link in a product review. What a crazy experience! I couldn’t update the plugin because I couldn’t log in. An administrator fixed my login. But it was a wake-up call to devote my time to other projects.
I removed Quick Mail from the WordPress plugin repository on November 12, 2019. Quick Mail is available on Github.
WordPress is also in the news because they copied the popular “Advanced Custom Fields” plugin. The new WordPress plugin “Secure Custom Fields” is a copy of “Advanced Custom Fields.”
Even more distasteful is creating a fake argument to give control of WordPress to a wealthy plugin developer.
WordPress Wants Free Help
Matt Mullenweg is also raising funds to sue WP Engine. The lawsuit concerns changes to the WordPress revision system. WP Engine has also refused to donate excessive free developer hours to fix bugs for the company that owns WordPress.
WordPress is supposed to be open-source. Anyone should be able to modify it, write plugins for it, and offer their work to other people.
Nice people certainly designed WordPress to make blogging easy and fun. But WordPress is not easy or fun in 2025.
Joy of Blogging
A blog is more than a journal.
Sometimes I read my old articles and remember how I learned WordPress.
45 articles describe writing and updating “Quick mail” over 11 years.
I also enjoy reliving a few eureka moments after fixing a tough bug.
Eternal Memories
My blog also includes memories and photos of:
- Ellen O’Mara
- Sara ‘Jayne’ Miller
- Karen King
- Larry Steur
- David Nolan
- Woodstock Music and Arts Fair
- Upper Tampa Bay Trail
Scary photos after a sniper shot me on a Greyhound bus in Cleveland.
I particularly enjoyed blogging about my hellacious high school experiences.
Finally, when life seems too easy, I can recall adjusting to unemployment after losing my job.
I recall my excitement when I read these articles today.
Future generations will read these articles on the Wayback Machine.
Final Thoughts
Blogging has been an 18-year adventure for me. Start your own blog. Document your journey. Share your passions.
I saved the best benefit for last: blogging will help you connect to other people and organizations, in unexpected ways. Keep blogging!