The Substitute Paper Boy & Boring Blogs

The guys in legal have asked me to make you sure you know that I haven’t ever kicked a dog, drowned a cat or run naked down the street covered in green Jello.

I haven’t ever been arrested involved in a police chase, hijacked a plane or traveled around the world by steam freighter. Nor can I share tales of having ridden the rails across the country while traveling with Hobo Joe and his band of merry men.

None of those things are true and I haven’t come close to doing most of them, with the exception of the dog bit, but I can explain that.

Around 35 years ago I used to work as a substitute paper boy, but I didn’tlook like the boy in the photo above.

My best friend was a paper boy for what was then called The Valley News and whenever his family went on vacation I would fill in for him.

That meant I would fold the papers, wrap a green rubber band around them, stuff them in a bag, load the bag onto my bicycle and gracefully toss the paper onto the porches of the subscribers.. Or maybe it is more accurate to say I threw it at the houses.

Misty Colored Memories

Three things stand out about those days:

1. In order to get it all done I had to wake up around 4:30 am.
2. Individually those papers were light, but collectively they were heavy. Sometimes it was hard to maintain control of my bicycle.
3. Every so often I would be chased by a neighbor’s dog.

That dog scared the hell of out of me. I don’t know if I ever knew its name but I remember everything else about it. He was probably a medium sized dog that wouldn’t scare me at all now, but I am not ten years old anymore.

There were more than a few mornings where many people in the neighborhood woke up to an empty porch. That was because on those particular mornings that dog  would chase me and I would peddle like crazy to get away. But the weight of the papers in the bag on my bike made it difficult to steer and I could never go fast enough to get away.

So on those mornings I would throw the papers at the dog and/or try to kick him. He never did bite me and I can’t  remember if he did more than nip at me.  Still, it doesn’t take any effort to remember how scared I was of getting bitten or the fear I felt when he would chase me.

The Connection Between Blogging and Josh, Substitute Paper Boy

The reason why so many blogs bore me and everyone else who encounters them is because the authors don’t use purpose, passion and personality in their posts. They rarely share stories about themselves and pick topics that have been written about 1,983,322 times before.

While there is no one single path to success in this field it is fair to say that dull and boring will kill your content. It is also fair to say you can cover the same topics as other writers as long as you use your voice in the post.

Pump that tale full of purpose, passion and personality and good things will come from that.

You don’t have to come up with crazy headlines or write about being mean to animals to get people to read your posts.

All you need to do is make a few easy changes and share some pieces of yourself. This can be applied to business blogs as well as personal. Help people find the human inside and you’ll build connections.

Connections are what power social media and what help to build communities that you want to be a part of.

What do you think?