#83 — Sorry For the Construction Dust

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Greetings and welcome to 2024

Let me start with an apology and an explanation. Yesterday was one of those days when if something was going to go wrong, it would — and did. All of you received at least one email from the Prompt A Day list yesterday. Subscribers to the list received five in total.

Prompt A Day is a list I’ve been running for about three years now. Subscribers receive a set of prompts daily to help spark their creativity. What I had been calling Word of the Day uses the word prompt. I create the prompts a month at a time and usually schedule them a week at a time. For some reason, I hadn’t scheduled Saturday’s email when I did the last batch, usually done on Sundays.

Yesterday morning, I realized my error and decided to send the Saturday email out with an apology. I promptly sent it to ALL my subscribers on every list. For those who are not Prompt A Day subscribers, my apologies. I then decided to schedule them until the end of the month so I didn’t repeat the error, at least not in January.

During scheduling, I managed to send two of those days out immediately, but just to the list’s subscribers. I rescheduled those two, so they will go on the correct days. I caught a few times where I almost scheduled the email to go to all subscribers again. I hope I caught them all and you won’t receive errant emails again.

One of the things I did while on the holiday break was to move my lists from MailerLite to ConvertKit, which I feel is better suited for the plans I’m building. I could probably say I’m still getting used to their system, but paying closer attention to what I’m doing helps, too.

I had planned to have all my new infrastructure built by now, but plans get made, and fate decides. I’m still working on the sites and have shifted what I’m doing from my original timeline.

Here’s what the general plan is for 2024.

This newsletter, Nicheless and Loving It, will continue to be published weekly on Mondays. You may see some different content and format, but it will remain what it has been since its inception. I have revamped its site, nichelessandlovingit.com, with a new look. There is an archive of the Prompt A Day emails starting on January 1st. I’ll also be creating an archive of this newsletter there as well.

The Nicheless Narrative podcast is home on nichelessandlovingit.com, and the new season will start on Wednesday when I publish a short trailer for Nicheless Narrative 2024. I plan to expand where the podcast is available this season after I finish building my other infrastructure.

My weekly audio show, Pimp Your Post Thursday (PYPT), which I’ve hosted for over six years, will continue every Thursday. It’s a live show where the audience shares content they have created. I post the recording and recap the content shared during the show on Mondays. That will continue in 2024.

Now, here is what is going to be different in 2024.

What I published as Word of the Day last year will continue as the Daily Echo. I distribute them on my Facebook page, Instagram, LinkedIn, and dBuzz on the Hive blockchain. A website called Reflective Echoes is being built as a home for the Daily Echoes, where people can subscribe to receive them daily. The distributed version will be just the image and the quote. Subscribers will receive a brief explanation of the image and quote that I’ve not been publishing. An archive of the posts will be available as well.

The reflections I have been writing will also find their home on Reflective Echoes. I’ve published and distributed the Daily Echo every day since January 1st, but I’ve not written any reflections. I have some catching up to do there. Instead, I’ve focused on getting my infrastructure into place. I’m hoping to get the site completed this week.

The reflections will be available by subscription and published three times a week. I had initially planned for the Reflective Echoes subscription to start on January 1st, but that hasn’t happened. A more realistic start date will be March 1st. Once I get the list set up, anyone who joins before March 1st will receive March and April at no charge. Anyone joining in March will receive March at no charge.

Last but not least, there will be a store offering merchandise with the Daily Echoes images on the Reflective Echoes site. I will likely start with a line of mugs bearing the image and the quote for that day. Other lines will be added. Only images used for the Daily Echoes and the Word of the Day will be available on the site.

I’ve generated over 15,000 images since learning how to do generative art. There are a lot of them I really liked. Once the Reflective Echoes site is up and running, my attention will turn to another site awaiting my attention: Shadows Creatives. I will build a store with merchandise featuring many of my images on that site.

Over the last four years, I’ve published about 100 books on Amazon. They are colouring books, journals and notebooks. My site, Shadows Publishing, will receive a complete rebuild to better display and promote the books. I aim to add more to them, but maybe I should get the current round of construction done before committing to new books this year.

All these sites are the Shadows Publishing Group of sites where I am finally bringing together the various creative aspects of my work. You’ll see Shadows Publishing mentioned on each site. They are like departments of what I do.

One of the suggestions ConvertKit makes is for members to create what they call a Member Profile page on their site. It’s like a Link Tree that many people use to provide a central point for people to find them. I like both ideas but didn’t like using a third-party solution.

I have a domain I’ve not been using, and I installed a fresh WordPress version on it. Shadows Central will be my central point for people to discover what’s happening around the Shadows Publishing Group.

What about your writing? I’ve not been doing much more than publishing the Daily Echo. I’ll be returning to more regular content before the end of January. Construction dust is so messy.

I earned the Publish 365 Days badge on the Hive chain. I was one of 95 who completed the year. I’ve set my sights on adding a “2” to the badge at the end of 2024, and my goal is they will not all be Daily Echoes. I have done a couple of posts about Midjourney this month and will share them below.

I’m excited to have this plan in place. I’m a bit frustrated it’s not going as quickly as I’d have liked, but I’ll not be deterred. It will come together. Thank you for being along on the journey so far.

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