Still the Lucky Few Newsletter-April 2016

Dear Readers of Still the Lucky Few,

It is almost a year since I launched this blog—a good time to send you my first newsletter! I won’t commit myself to a regular schedule for this, but will write you whenever I feel there is something regarding my blog that I’d like you to know.

Thank you everyone!

First, a big thank you to my regular readers, and especially to those of you who add your comments after reading a post. Comments are the bread and butter of a blog. They are the measure of how much you have enjoyed an article, and how much it has resonated with you. For most bloggers, me included, comments keeps us connected to the human race, rather than feeling that we are toiling alone in a dark, cold attic!

Although having people approve of my writing has never been my objective, I am amazed that all of the comments have been well-intentioned and positive. This may be an outcome of the nature of my audience—mostly older, well-informed people. It certainly is not true for many blogs aimed at a younger, more general audience. Some are quite rude, and skating toward offensive! Apart from spam, I have never had to remove a comment.

Like most blogs, Still the Lucky Few has a “dashboard”, which allows me to see the number of hits and receive other information. I have been very pleased that this blog has reached close to 10,000 hits in under a year. I find it amazing that 10,000 fingers have clicked on my blog, and 10,000 sets of eyes have read it. Every writer wants to be read. It’s soul food to us!

About that little button…

This program also tracks the number of you who have made the commitment of signing on to receive an email each time an article is published. Bloggers love to have people sign on—it ensures a regular audience of readers who immediately receive the email, the minute it is posted. Out of 10,000 readers, and hundreds of comments, I have discovered that there are many more of you who stopped short of clicking on that little button that says,  “Subscribe”. However, I am encouraged by the number of you who did take that leap of faith, and also by all of you who visit regularly by bookmarking or using search engines. When I add the number of Facebook “friends” who receive direct news of each blog, I am happy that I have a solid base of followers, and that’s what keeps this blogger going!

On the subject of social media, I have experimented with Twitter, which promises to bring me many more readers, and although I haven’t given up, it’s a little tricky and a lot of work! I’ve decided that it’s best to wait until later before implementing other social media, such as Instagram.

I started this blog with the intention of illuminating the “Silent Generation”, those of us born between 1926 and 1945. For the purposes of this blog, I renamed our generation “The Lucky Few” since I felt that ours was the last generation to benefit from a standard of economic stability never seen before or since. I wanted to highlight what our generation did to lay the groundwork for the progress and prosperity that followed with great benefits to everyone, including the baby boomers..

Spreading my wings (just a little)

As the months rolled by, and I continued to write about this generation, I started to explore other topics. At Christmas, I wrote a story about a holiday experience from my childhood, It was so well received, that I continued to retrieve stories from my past, and write about them. I discovered that you enjoyed it when I “went off the grid” and deviated from the more serious topics of generation and ageism.

So while my rational mind wants to keep this blog on track, writing about how our generation is faring, my creative mind says, “Give it a rest, Diane, have a little fun!” I’m doing this now, interspersing my more serious articles with humorous accounts of experiences from my childhood and young adulthood.

In my more serious articles, I have touched on the issue of ageism, which is currently occupying a great deal of space online and in the media. I’m growing a little tired of it, since some of the noise out there is bitter and negative, but will address it from time to time. It is such an important issue and concerns us all.

Recently, I’ve tried a more positive note, while at the same time keeping ageism in my sights, by focusing on elder artists and innovators who are creating well into their old age. I love this perspective, and will continue to explore and write about these amazing people—and I include many of you in this group!

Thanks for reading this initial newsletter. Please leave comments and any suggestions you might have for future articles. If you have run into any problems in navigating this blog, I’d love to hear from you!