For use: July 25, 2000

 

Future Shoes: "Note to Readers #2"

by Michael Finley

Copyright (c) 2000 by Michael Finley

This is to let you know there are going to be some minor changes in my weekly letter. Minor to you, anyway.

For eight years now I have been writing my Future Shoes column and flogging it on the net, with not a lot of success. What I liked about it was that, being unsuccessful, I was under no pressure to please any particular constituency. Thus, I was able to write about just about anything -- and usually wound up writing about myself, until that became a joke, and then beyond that. Sometimes, I had no idea what it was about, but I soldiered on.

I never minded when I was inspired, but it gets hard when the spirit is weak, and the deadline is still there.

I had great plans for the column. I was going to write a weekly personal essay that focused on some aspect of our lives, as changing times intruded on them. But something wasn't right, because I not only never found any buyers beyond a small knot of very loyal and very lovable publishers (like the Albany NY Times Union, mwah! http://www.timesunion.com/plugged/ ... and Joe Shea's American Reporter, double mwah!)... (www.american-reporter.com)

For the past six months I have dotted every page on my site (some 40 megabytes worth) with invitatiions to subscribe to myletter. Can you believe it -- in 23 weeks I picked up just 13 subscribers! (Despite some 50,000 page-views over that period.) If that doesn't tell you how busy we all are, well, I don't know what would.

Anyway, this summer Computer User asked me to bring Future Shoes in from the cold, and make it a regular weekly column on its website at http://www.computeruser.com. That's good -- I feel wanted. The only hangup is that they need exclusivity to make it worth their while.

Well, there is one other hangup -- they want a product that acts just a wee bit less like a drunken rhinoceros on a rolling poopdeck in high seas.

So I am trimming my sails a bit. The NEW Future Shoes will be 300-500 words long, instead of my usual 850 -- and while they are giving me lots of leeway, I feel that their appetite for brain tumor tales and other strange compulsions of mine will be less than mine. Funny is better than morose, and mentioning technology from time to time won't hurt either.

You probably won't know the difference -- the columns will still ship to you once a week. But they'll be more along the lines of a sneak preview, and less like releasing a boxful of pigeons from a rooftop, to see which way they go. I'll continue to write an occasional column I've been calling mfinley.com, that will appear in this space. But I will not make myself crazy pouring it out on a weekly basis, whether there is a tale to tell or not.

I don’t know what will become of my other little offshoots, Business Bestiary (http://mfinley.com/list-bestiary.htm) and Future Shoes (http://mfinley.com/articles/imelda.htm). They were each conceived as money-making operations. I'm not opposed to making money. I just didn’t make any. I guess I will try harder to sell them through conventional channels, cuz no one picked them up online.

That's my news. Good news, on balance. Thanks for continuing to read my letter. I know it adds to the in-pile and at times is a burden. Here's hoping it gives you a smile or a thoughtful aha! from time to time as well.

                                                            Your friend, Mike