When I die I will be forgotten in a month. No big deal. I just want my scrapbooks up!
When I ended up in the hospital two years ago, got out with no explanation of my problem and they still haven't figured it out yet, only about 4 or 5 people out of my 2800 subscribers bothered to email me, and NONE from this board. Even all my own bloggers! That's why I shut down freeminds2.org. I canned the site because of my "helpers" and "bloggers." It wasn't worth killing myself and trying to help unappreciative persons and people who offered their help and bailed, leaving me dead in the water. . Life on the internet is fleeting.
Doesn't bother me, I could do without all the phone calls and donations then. couldn't even take a salary after that, as 90% of our income disappeared, just because I wasn 't posting on the net daily. What kind of stupidity is that? Even my own bloggers weren't interested in what happened to me. I'm over busting my ass on the Net, but freeminds.org will always continue, at least as a monument to my blood, sweat and tears for over 30 years. But I am more than happy with what I've accomplished MYSELF.
Going to reinvent myself, if I can overcome my bodily fractures. I can barely walk now, and the doctors can't figure it out. I have learned I always have to do things myself, or they won't get done. But I'm used to living that philosophy.
I have probably the only person-run cult ministry in the world that could gross over 100k a year the last few years, with NO money from churches, organizations, or very little from people on this site. I shut down my stores.
But I had a lot of generous givers that I made friends with 25-30 years ago, and they still are great friends, but they have all but retired. They kept me alive. Kudos to the Jansmas, Danny Haszard, and many other great friends of mine, who except for Danny never really visited this site. Making good friends and keeping them is the key to life... and NOT internet-only friends. Poof! and they're gone one day. A waste of time when you've already accomplished what you wanted to from the start. And I did, much more so than I expected.
I was one of the very first on the Net re: JWs in 1996, and always had the greatest traffic for decades... over 2k unique visitors a day. There are still several gigs of files, video and audio on my site, but have to fix some links now that all will be part of the freeminds.org site. I dumped all the stuff from freeminds2.org... it wasn't me at all, and all who ASKED to help that proposed to fix and work on the site bailed, dropping my income to $2800 a year because the site was broken. But I know of no one else that could, by themselves, draw in over 100k a year consistently before they came along and broke it all. But they meant well.
Oh well, I need a permanent vacation.
peace,
Randy Watters
http://randallwatters.org (links to be fixed shortly)