I’ve just returned from a seven week vacation in the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. At 66 years old, I’m also officially at “pension” age — and in fact am receiving Canada’s Old Age Security and Canada Pension Plan benefits.
I’m certainly not retired, with our start-up publication Ontario Construction News approaching its first year of publication as daily construction trade newspaper, a description relevant to allow us to publish some specialized legal notices for contractors in the province. I never dreamed I would “retire” as a daily newspaper publisher, even if the newspaper is electronic, as the law allows.
If you’ve visited this blog in recent months, you’ll have noticed that entries are few and far between. At the outset, the reason for the infrequent postings related to the work effort in launching the new publication — a daily cycle newspaper (we format it as an eight page PDF tabloid) requires massive amounts of fresh relevant editorial content. As well, we continue to publish several US construction e-magazines supplemented by weekly eletters. I was simply too burned out from work to bother with the blog.
As the new business started to thrive, we hired a full-time staff editor, and as I prepared for the lengthy overseas vacation, the business contracted with another experienced writer and the Canadian Press news service to bulk up the content and free me from writing responsibilities. These developments meant that the business overall could run quite smoothly with me just being available occasionally (email worked almost everywhere we travelled) to handle matters outside the scope of the company’s other employees and contractors. I guess I’ve mastered the concept of “working on, not in the business” and it is good to see it working well.
Now that I’ve returned from vacation, my work load is very light. I suppose I could resume this blog — and I might. But it seems right on another level to acknowledge that its time has passed and it is time to explore other ideas.
I won’t formally shutter this blog. There are many years of useful archival material here, and from time to time, I expect I’ll return with postings when interesting ideas come to mind. And you can certainly still reach me anytime at buckshon@constructionmarketingideas.com.
