A Stay of Execution

We are now about one month away from the one year anniversary of the ten year anniversary of this blog. Take a moment to digest that. It’s an admittedly silly statement but, strangely, not pointless. You see, when demarking my ten year blogging anniversary, last year, I also proclaimed that the following year would be the last for A Crock of Schmidt. That come February of 2025, i.e. now, my hosting would come up for renewal, and rather than continue, I would simply walk away.

My reasons were twofold, though I only spoke of one in that post. There’s no need to rehash all the details here, but the gist was I just didn’t feel it worth the effort for a paltry hundred bucks in income after hosting and domain expenses. So, I have one less bill to light my cigars with. Big deal.

The second reason, and until now unspoken, was that I intended to get a job. A part time job, mind you. Nothing fancy. Nothing related to my former career or any of my feeble attempts at retraining. But a job, nonetheless. I would check my ego, shed any delusions that I could return to what I’d left behind sixteen years ago, and get myself a modest, part time gig.

A simple enough idea. Sure, the minimum wage (or near minimum) would be humbling, but it would certainly surpass that which my blogging brought in. While I needed to remain cognizant of certain physical limitations (damn, traitorous body) and preferred opportunities close to my home, I was confident I’d gain employment in short order.

Whelp, that quaint game plan proved fraudulent. It turns out, not only am I unemployable but I am REALLY unemployable. In fact, of all the jobs I applied to, only one responded to me positively, or at all (flashbacks to this rant), and that was for a Canada Post Letter Carrier position. When I learned letter carriers walk upwards of 20 km per day (!), sometimes more, I meekly bowed out during the screening phase.

All the rest had no interest in me whatsoever. I tried local retail jobs at Shoppers Drug Mart, Safeway, PetSmart, and Ace Liquor. I tried driver/delivery positions with Calgary Public Library, Alberta Precision Laboratories, Springbank Cheese, and an auto glass joint. There were bank teller programs with TD, funeral assistant positions at South Calgary Funeral Centre, and overnight stock person at Ikea. Not a single, personal response from any of them, never mind an interview.

I even dug way back to my earliest employment experience as a high school grunt at Home Hardware, but neither the local Rona store nor the Home Hardware store in Okotoks had any interest in my services. None other than my neighbourhood community association ghosted me for a casual bookkeeping position.

Perhaps the most insulting rejection came from Real Canadian Superstore. They declined me (at least with a form email) for a personal shopper position. I’ve been a bloody stay-at-home dad for 16 years and counting! I’ve performed all household grocery shopping duties for more than two decades. I literally witness these personal shoppers while I’m doing my own shopping every week. But apparently, I’m not qualified for such a position.

Needless to say, my confidence plummeted. And it wasn’t hovering too high above sea level to begin with. As the calendar flipped years once again, and the one year anniversary of my quitting in one year’s time proclamation approached, I’ve had to re-reevaluate my plans. Maybe, a hundred bucks a year ain’t so bad after all? Maybe, just maybe, that’s all I’m really worth?

A Different Perspective

And then there’s the fresh perspective of youth. God bless children, even teens, and their innocent views of money and time and the interrelationship of the two.

When I told my family that I intended to wind down my blog, they understood my reasoning (let’s pretend they cared). Except for my son, that is. He was rather perplexed. Still in his early teens, and at the beginning stage of his first job, he couldn’t understand why I would willingly walk away from a whole hundred dollars.

He felt this was especially true if the money came regardless of whether I wrote another blog post in my life. That was one of his first questions to me and I had to agree that, for at least a couple years, the campground reviews would likely continue to generate traffic and thus ad income. His bewilderment at my proposed actions had me questioning my own intelligence. Perhaps this is why I can’t get hired? Am I genuinely stupid?

All of which brings me back to the here and now. It is mid-February of the year 2025, and much to the surprise of 2024 me, I am shopping around for new, less expensive webhosting for the purpose of prolonging my love/hate relationship with blogging. The stay of execution has been issued. A Crock of Schmidt will live on! There will be an eleventh anniversary.

I don’t know how much new blogging I will be doing, but there will be some. Hey, I might as well add to the content if I’m keeping the blog alive. This will include new campground reviews this spring and summer, something I regrettably didn’t do last summer under the assumption that I’d be quitting. I may toss in some other stuff as well. Nothing too radical or controversial, but like this here post, the odd musing has its place.

As for those precious few readers that wrote to me last year lamenting my decision, thank you so very much for the kind words. I can’t impress upon you enough how much joy those emails brought me. I hope this news pleases you.