This month ends the 20th year of This Side of Fifty.
This writing and the music I perform are two great avocations, two great joys, two hobbies. I would have loved to have done either or both professionally. While, that dream, that desire, is not dead, I must admit that the probability of it happening is diminished and ebbing with each passing day primarily because of my age. I will continue to do both because of my devotion to them and the enjoyment I get from them.
This blog gets views. The musical piece I record and post on Facebook also gets views.
In terms of music there are videos I have made of myself on Facebook and several that were recorded by Ara Topouzian when I played in his group at an AYF picnic. I have one video from 2014 in which I play God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Joy to the World. It has 9,900+ views. It is popular because of the Christmas Carols but also because I post it every year since them. The second most popular is something I called A Bit of Nihaventing from October 16, 2021. It has over 3,800 views. I have a few more with views in the 2,000-3,000 view range. They include:
Armenian Dance Song - Ara Topouzian Ensemble
These are all decent numbers nothing close to what anyone ever might call viral.
From this blog, I have three posts with 2,000 or more views.
Never Give Up! 9.57K views This blew up during the pandemic
The Detroit Lions 5.26K views Most of these numbers are from when I first posted it.
Killings in Christchurch 2.36K views This post also racked-up most of these views in the first few days of posting it.
There are 11 more posts with between 1,000 and 2,000 views. The remaining 825 posts have less than 999 views with, and I am guessing, 700 of them in the 1-200 range.
As mentioned, the writing and music are avocations or hobbies. They are fulfilling, enjoyable, and fun.
Over the past 10 years, as a full-time member of the North Park University faculty, I have been recording lectures for online courses and problem-solving tips for both online and face-to-face classes on my professional YouTube channel. The purpose of this was to provide a resource for students to watch on their own time. They could watch all or parts of an entire lecture or just watch a short video on how to solve a specific style of problem. When the pandemic hit in 2020 and we went totally online, I recorded all my lectures. For all practical purposes, I rarely visited this YouTube channel except to be sure a video I just uploaded was functional.
Recently, a student came up to me class and said, “Professor, you’re really popular on YouTube.” I replied, “I don’t think so,” thinking that YouTube was only for music. The student, “Your lectures get a lot of views.” I was surprised. I had never really checked. When I did, I found out that I had 4,320+ followers and 240 videos. While by blog has 840 posts, there are only 51 followers. I have videos with with 150K, 100K, 70K, 33K, 30K, 16K, and 11K views. There are 42 will view in the 1,000 to 9,999 views. I had no idea.
After a bit of thought, it makes total sense that my professorial post has more followers and are viewed more often. That is my “day job.” It was I get paid to do. Being a professor is the last part of my 48-year career. I have lots of experience in both industry and teaching. While the production content of these videos is nothing special, they are actually amateurish, the content is useful. I guess I have a knack for explaining things per the comments.
Here is an example: Forecasting and Demand Planning: Example. You get the best of what I do content wise as well as the amateurish production and delivery that includes talking to myself, awkward moments of silence, and way too much fumbling around in Excel. As I tell my students, they should watch it the first time for the content. After that, if they can’t sleep, they should watch it again, and they’ll be out like a light. I truly believe I could market these videos as sleep aids.
Will I stop posting my writing or
music? No. They are my hobbies. Will I pay more attention to my professorial
posts and try to improve on presentation and production quality? For sure.
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