To have a successful blog, content is king. No matter what your niche, interest, or scope, your blog’s content is the primary reason people visit (and hopefully) return. To have solid, relevant, and what proves to be valuable content, you need a solid foundation to build upon.
Hence, these first few posts here.
I’ve already told you where I’ve been and where I am in the scope of blogging and websites. What I haven’t told you as much is where I am now, and where I’m aiming to go. What are my interests or what takes up my free time? Well, it is as simple as it is complex and in-depth.
First and foremost, this site is an obvious interest. My principal goal for using this site is to share my thoughts without any restrictions, so I can freely express myself. I have three kids, all with their own ways of stressing me out. Even more so when you consider the older two, who do not live with us, are forty-five minutes away from me, in opposite directions. There is always plenty to unpack and write about.
Believe it or not, that’s not what I’m writing about here. I’m talking more about my hobbies and my interests. I have pretty broad interests, but currently, I can break them down into just a few primary categories.
Graphic Design
I’m not sure I won’t ever be interested in graphic design in some form. I always have that scratch for a creative outlet. Ever since I was a kid, drawing or redrawing any cartoon character you could think of. I was drawing and designing the equivalent of 8-bit characters and printing them off with a dot matrix printer, long before 8-bit was cool.
I will sit and fully admit that I do not do enough pencil-to-paper drawings as I should. It is a skill that I have let get a bit rusty. (Okay, a lot rusty). It is something I hope to get back to, at least some, in the coming year, and the fact that I’m putting those words into writing, I hope it helps to motivate me to get back on that horse. I even plan on adding a portfolio section to the site, just to allow me to post select designs and sketches of mine, without relying on the old Instagram model.
In terms of actual logo designing, while I’d love to get a fresh new job, or something that motivates me to just sit and kick out 6-10 concepts, I don’t have anything on the horizon, and I’m not actively looking. I’ve just recently created an account on UpWork, which is something I should have done years ago. While I’m definitely starting behind the 8-ball in that realm, we’ll see if anything comes from it.
I am, however, trying to keep myself sharp, trying to give myself outlets, even if they’re simply my own personal projects.
Parsons Equipment Project
Speaking of personal projects, what I’m calling the Parsons Equipment Project is one such thing. My Grandfather, and my great-grandfather, who I never met, owned and ran a farm equipment store in my small hometown throughout the 1960s. As you would with a business such as this, they ran advertisements in our local newspaper, the Mount Vernon Signal.
While there are archives of the newspaper that cover well before and after the 1960s, the scans themselves leave a lot to be desired. While some are of better quality than others, they are all a mess. As I have collected these digital newspaper clippings while scouring the archives, a thought crossed my mind of recreating these ads to bring them back to their glory.
And the Parsons Equipment Project was born. Not only a collection of the newspaper ads for Parsons Equipment Company, but a collection of those ads, recreated, to as close a match as can be made (by me) digitally.
Just a small personal project, with no goal, no end game, just something fun for me, and something fun I thought would be worth sharing.
Genealogy
Something else that I’ve recently fallen into, and connects to the Parsons Equipment Company, is diving into my family’s genealogy. I’ve already had many successes, along with some failures, and it has all been while simply getting my feet wet. While it likely will not be a keystone part of what I do here at Parsons Media, it will probably be something I reference from time to time, and it is a subject I feel fits right at home here as well.
Geeky Things
I do not shy away from the fact that I’m a geek, a nerd, whatever term you want to use. I still love watching movies, checking out the latest news, and can still be found reading an occasional comic book. While I can’t promise I won’t ever share anything geeky here, my primary geeky focuses can be found either on X (Twitter) or the occasional post on the rebooted Geekasms. Again, not something I plan to throw a lot of here on this site, but it’s a category of interest I have, and since it is a part of who I am, it’s worth listing.
Ultimately, the foundation of Parsons Media is me. This is what you get. If it is on this site, you know it comes from me, and it’s something I was compelled to share. This will not be a site of posts created simply for hits, or to try to rank high on Google with a heavily SEO-optimized article. Those are for those other sites.
To be successful, it is said a blog needs to have a niche. Needs to have a voice for a particular audience. I hope I don’t disappoint anyone, but that’s not what this site is. This is not what this site is built upon. The only niche this site fits into is an audience of 1.
