A private blogger not blogging for money

Not for the money

As recently as Tuesday, I was asked once again if I was generating any income from my blog, to which I answered no. I could say that I have been asked this question consistently from around the third year of my blog being in existence.

There was a time I thought I could generate passive income by allowing advertisements on my blog, but more than just upsetting the general look-and-feel of the blog with adverts interspersed in places I would rather they did not, it was nigh on impossible to control and manage the content being shared from my blog space, I had no alternative but to remove the feature.

On another note, I do not consider myself that much of a self-promoter or influencer that depends on the oxygen of traffic, footfall, likes, and comments to survive. I write because I like writing about things, that I have an audience that is just one of good fortune and interest rather than some deliberate effort to please or attract custom.

Always worth my while

However, I have found myself in certain forums where I have talked about my blog and from that garnered interest from others to read and view my musings. A blog in its 20^th year is probably more than a novelty, to me, it is also a thing of pride that it started during a time when everyone seemed to have something to say until they got disinterested or distracted by some other trend. I continued regardless.

I can even remember there was a time that a website titled, ‘How Much Is My Blog Worth?’ existed, you keyed in your blog URL and it produced some arbitrary figure, at least for my amusement more than anything else. In some cases, I have been asked to write for others, a task that has proved quite onerous compared to what I would generally publish on my blog.

It is my space

It is the autonomy and control that I enjoy, no one can review, edit, or alter what I have written on my blog, and as I am not beholden to anyone in terms of monetary or market demands, the freedom to express myself in the frame of reference of how I see and understand things is untrammelled. That does not mean I am licentious and reckless, as I can appreciate how publishing over 20 years might just have some historical viewpoint that might offend someone.

I have also been advised that from all that I have already written, I probably have enough to publish books on different themes, subjects, life and so on. Though my seeming ability to knock out blogs does not seem to have transferred to the needed skill to write long-form stories you would find in a novel. My autobiography languishes in bits and pieces strung together on a premise I cannot begin to assess well enough for any coherence.

To take the words of Tina Turner and adapt them to my situation, I am just a Private Blogger not blogging for money but doing just what I want to do. Then again, I am open to ideas, including those towards commemorating 20 years of blogging in December 2023.

Running the gauntlet of influencer clout blackmail

Be glad for the professionalism

I got involved in a thread conversation on Twitter this morning because I felt there was a seething sense of entitlement bordering on blackmail that could not be overlooked. The poster had used the services of a skin specialist whose professionalism had eradicated hyperpigmentation from his face, and one would assume out of customer satisfaction, the poster recommended other people to the skin specialist.

It transpired that the skin specialist told the poster that through his recommendation, some 500 other clients had used his professional services. The skin specialist thanked the poster for the recommendation and that should have been enough.

This is just barefaced entitlement

However, the poster did a mental calculation on the 500 clients, imagined the total income from that clientele and came to the conclusion that the skin specialist’s gratitude could have been better expressed in a probably a free year of skincare services and so by inference labelled the skin specialist an ingrate for getting all that custom and providing no tangible reward.

Now, I cannot say how large the skin specialist’s business is, but one thing is certain, if the skin specialist had not achieved the results of fixing the poster’s face, everything else that resulted in referrals, increased clientele and additional income from the clients would not have happened. What professionals do is provide a service for which they get paid and if the customer decides to recommend them, that is a bonus.

Please respect the professional

What I take issue with is people who having obtained a good professional service for which time and resources have been meticulously devoted expecting to get a free service in reward for their recommendations. It is one thing to have agreed beforehand that you will bring custom to a business for some reward, and it is another to expect a reward from having benefitted from a service. If it is exclusively your decision to recommend a business, do not return to blackmail the business owner into giving you a free service.

In fact, professionals should always be treated as professionals with skills on the market to be monetarised, please respect the professional, and pay up. For example, would anyone having had a successful surgical procedure and then recommended the surgeon to others now expect the surgeon to provide free services for subsequent surgeries as an expression of gratitude? What makes a surgeon different from a skin specialist or a computer expert except for the tendency to denigrate and contemn one in relation to the other?

Paying forward is better

I have recommended businesses and services just as I have written reviews about services that have not been to a professional standard either to get them to change or to alert other customers about issues with the business. Where my reviews have redounded to the bottom line, I do not stand at the gate seeking compensation or reward, I pay fully for the service provided respecting what they do.

My principle is to pay forward rather than seek reward, what I can afford, I pay for, if the business wants to be generous, that generosity is better directed to those in need. I would not let acquisitive greed deprive others of opportunity and access. Like if the skin specialist offered a free session, I would probably suggest it be given to someone who needs it but cannot afford it.

It is blackmail, no less

This brings me to the issue of influencers; these are people who have a large following due to activity in their situation who have consequently promoted a business or service to their followers. Whilst I cannot essentially class fame or infamy as a profession, some do use their influencer clout to then attempt to blackmail businesses, services, or professionals into providing free products and services for exposure to their following.

For some businesses, there can be a beneficial end to that, but to put upon a professional and predicate that by your influence their business has survived and without you, they will be nothing is quite an aggrandisement and close to delusions of grandeur. It is the professional’s prerogative to express gratitude as they deem fit without having to be excoriated or abused for just expressing thanks instead of doling out freebies.

Ultimately, if you can’t pay for the service, go elsewhere. If you feel entitled to a free service, find a gullible professional ready to sacrifice their professionalism for your influencer schtick. Enough of the backhanded recommendations seeking reward, if anything, it is utterly reprehensible, and I have no qualms about calling it out.

Thought Picnic: Free Your Mind

Opening the mind

It goes without saying with each interaction and posting I see on Social Media it is interesting to read views, opinions, entrenchments and prejudices along with the less bigoted, tolerant, open-minded and pragmatic accommodating stances of others.

I am more attracted to the accommodating types, people who despite who they are, are willing to understand and appreciate that there are others very different, very diverse, very separate, very distant from themselves, but still have a right to not only exist, but should be allowed the pursuit of happiness like any other.

Feeding our ability to sympathise

Our shared humanity when allowed to walk free beyond the little confines of our own experiences opens us up to realities we may never fully understand but still can embrace.

This is what feeds our ability to sympathise, probably empathise or even dare to be compassionate, when we extricate ourselves from the moralistic impositions that give us the licence for unfeeling indifference, judgemental apathy, disinterest, and incitement to hate.

We all are guilty of it one way or the other when we think little of others in comparison to ourselves or the people we hold in high esteem that we are ready to sacrifice them on any altar be it of religion, of belief, of creed, of custom, of tradition, of principle or of the law without any inkling or sense of tender-heartedness or mercy - we find basis and justification for where we stand and with that feel comfortable.

Free your mind

We have the capacity for more if we allow ourselves the frequent opportunities to extend ourselves.

It brings to mind the lines in the lyrics of Free Your Mind by En Vogue which go thus:

Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.

Freeing one’s mind is a journey in our recognition of the global village of great diversity we reside in, a world of over 7 billion people of whom we would find relationships of love and hate, friendship and enmity, fun and boredom, joy and sadness, acceptance and rejection with the challenge to treat others as we would love to be treated.

If we were to walk a mile in another man’s shoes, would we think differently about them and accept them in the brotherhood of our existence?

The beauty of blindness

Be colour blind, be gender blind, be sexuality blind, be religiously blind, be personality blind, be status blind, be blind to every difference that you don’t yet fully understand but exists around you by situation and by circumstance but still harbour a searching, curious, yearning spirit to find unity, affinity, amity and the best of the next and the next and the next until a bridge of humanity is built towards our togetherness and harmony. Free your mind.

"Free Your Mind"

Prejudice, wrote a song about it.
Like to hear it? Here it go.

I wear tight clothing, high heeled shoes
It doesn't mean that I'm a prostitute, no no
I like rap music, wear hip hop clothes
That doesn't mean that I'm out sellin' dope no no
Oh my forgive me for having straight hair, no
It doesn't mean there's another blood in my heir yeah yeah
I might date another race or color
It doesn't mean I don't like my strong black brothers.

Why oh why must it be this way
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow.
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow

So I'm a sistah
Buy things with cash
That really doesn't mean that all my credit's bad, oooh
So why dispute me and waste my time
Because you really think the price is high for me
I can't look without being watched, and oh
You rang my buy before I made up my mind, OW!
Oh now attitude, why even bother
I can't change your mind, you can't change my color

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow…

Why oh why must it be this way?
Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said
Free your mind and the rest will follow
Be color blind, don't be so shallow... FREE YOUR MIND!

Denzil Foster, Thomas McElroy

Nigeria: An argument or a wife-battering controversy?

A tabloid frenzy

On Twitter and Facebook, my fellow Nigerians are getting excited over a case of apparently atrocious conduct which has left some taking sides and expressing interesting viewpoints.

The detail of the matter makes good tabloid fodder, all parties have now resorted to making the press a battle arena for their sides of the story but there are more general issues at play that allows for focus to be geared towards this episode.

This issue is very controversial and I do not expect many to agree with most of what I have written but it probably should set forth an interesting debate on what our societal values are.

The background is, a wife involves the authorities in a what was a domestic altercation, she has stated her case, her husband has defended himself and the son has offered a viewpoint too – the truth is somewhere between the morass of claim and counter-claim with certain pictures showing that the lady by some happenstance came to serious harm.

Degrees of severity

When one reviews all the claims and the commentary, it comes down to a matter of degrees; a simple argument, an almighty row, a domestic dispute, wife battery occasioning actual bodily harm; each of those levels appear to have their supporters but it is important to reflect on the self-evident issues.

Education and social standing does not preclude a marriage from having difficulties, the persons involved are human first and then they have roles that they play in society that accords them a modicum of status and respect.

In general, either by force of religious persuasion, custom or tradition, marriages are in certain societies not ones of partnership. There is a leader, usually the husband whose headship of the family unit is usually not predicated on love but control and authority through benevolent provision on which the ego of the man squarely depends.

Making do with the untenable

People endure failing, failed or bad marriages for longer than is necessary or healthy, differences that are almost irreconcilable are allowed to fester, each party trying their darndest to maintain a semblance of cohesiveness where there is none for all sorts of religious or societal reasons – the fault lines are revealed when there is a disagreement and the wrong things get said and the more that exchange continues, it gets violent and worse can happen.

The dynamics of wife-battering are difficult to analyse, fundamentally, it is reprehensible but it gets condoned when parties are characterised as difficult, impossible and in need of some control – the fact that the authorities are usually reticent to get involved could mean that it is usually more acceptable and possibly widespread but grossly underreported.

Victimising the victim

Sadly, there are instances where the obvious victim of violence gets cast as the instigator absolving the perpetrator of the violence from culpability by reason of some warped diminished responsibility – the default to animal behaviour to make up for the inability to control one’s temper, anger, emotions and reactions is inexcusable; no matter the aggravation, the smart and wise should be able to find ways, means and methods to diffuse the situation rather than resort to barbarity.

It is easier said than done but it is not beyond the limits of human ability to do right, act right and be morally justified rather than open oneself to the prospect of disgrace at a point where more are frowning on such atrocious conduct.

Myopic or hyperopic observation

The last issue in this matter is that of eye-witnesses, it involves referring to the particular to derive the seminal – what the son observed and narrated reveals a lot more beyond the construction of his viewpoint.

It all comes down to the issue of degrees – on the matter of separating the warring couple, the mother was taken away from the to be calmed down, the son contends he did not separate them from the ensuing fracas.

Apparently from the viewpoint of the son the mother only suffered a few cuts and nothing as extensive as was revealed in the pictures – in the heat of the moment, maybe a cut to one eye is a gash to another but the pictures do show actual bodily harm inflicted by some means which suggests battering did occur.

It is left to speculation whether this sort of family squabble is so familiar that all parties are inured to the gravity of damage caused when the evidence is reviewed.

Allegiances of childhood

There are ages of childhood and dependence – up to adolescence the child might well require a parental relationship based on care and love which usually has a maternal context; beyond adolescence but before gaining the means of independence the child evolves into on needing to understand the allegiances of responsibility that will facilitate provision for career decisions and a life of independence – this usually derives from a paternal context especially where the father is the chief bread-winner in the family.

The fear of loss of security despite the facts might sway allegiances as honesty gives way to pragmatism, the result being the preponderance of half-truths.

An older child of independent means would probably have provided a more objective assessment of the matter if their comfort was not so threatened by the actions of others who literally had nothing to lose.

From all the exchanges, society is not entirely repulsed by wife-battering, it seems to be condoned and accepted as part of married life, whilst opinions can be diametrically opposed, conservatives and liberals are rarely in agreement about the need to frown on this issue.

The needs for change

There might well be cause leading to effect, the legacy, history and context might help in conflict resolution but they should not offer the excuse and justification to violence even if seriously aggravated.

There should be greater acceptance of situations where if a marriage is not working, it is just not working and a kind of settlement for separation should be facilitated and expedited. A violent relationship is unhealthy for the parties, their community and society at large.

Authorities should be ready to investigate to the fullest extent possible allegations of domestic violence before it escalates into unimaginable and impossible situations.

References

Rather than reference my sources within the context of the blog, the links below capture the general controversy that can be read to get and develop an objective perspective on the matter.

Sahara Reporters - Kenya Police Writes Nigerian Government Over Wife-Batterer Ambassador

Transparency Nigeria - Nigeria recalls Wigwe over wife battering

The Daily Times Nigeria - Ambassador Chijoke Wigwe responds to allegations of abusing his wife

234Next - Ministry probes envoy over wife battery charge

The Report Report - The Real Tessy Wigwe, Written By Nelson Wigwe (Son)

Novotel St. Pan Crap

Service before edifice

The moment a hotel fails to realise that is it the service rather than the edifice that makes for returning customers, they have lost the plot and are on to a monumental failure.

Generally, I use hotels in the Accor Group which range from the upmarket Sofitel through Novotel, Mercure & Pullman to the budget Ibis and bargain basement Etap or Formule1. I use the Radisson group of hotels where the Accor brand is either unsuitable or not available, for instance in terms of location, accessibility, service and quality, I would stay at the Radisson rather than the Ibis in Antwerp.

Where hotels and service have been worthy of commendation and praise, I have almost been effusive, the Riu Hotel Maspalomas stands out as an excellent hotel with the most exquisite service, in my mind.

Destroying habits

I am also a creature of habit; I rarely change what I am used to and would probably return to the same hotel until they mess up big time.

I remember an instance in Berlin where the Mercure Hotel near Templeton oversubscribed the hotel and I having booked my room almost three week before was about to be bumped off around hotels for nights before I could settle in the one I booked.

I refused to sleep around hotels like a prostitute and demanded as a holder of an Accor Favourite Guest Card holder – which comes with guarantees – to be put in another hotel of similar of better standard for the duration of my stay at no extra cost.

They met that requirement, but having been a customer of that hotel for over 3 years, I have not returned, no, not for another night, it is black listed and that is the end of that story – all because the service as offered by the staff was rotten.

When in London

In London, I stay at the Novotel St. Pancras which until the St. Pancras International railway station was opened was Novotel Euston, I might have stayed here up to 15 times.

A tall imposing 15 storey building beside the British Library with views all around London, it would not been lost on regular customers that since the name change, the prices have gone up but the service and quality has deteriorated.

With the change of staff especially at the reception has come a bearable tolerance for the convenience of the location of that hotel.

The staff at the breakfast restaurant are quite good, friendly and generally efficient in the circumstances, however, my room bookings end up in debate either because I am not getting what I paid for or something is not working in the room.

This time, I had to get them to sort out my television, I could have changed rooms but if you have done 6 hours of travel, the last thing you want is to move around rooms like the chambermaid.

A taxing case for taxis

Usually, when I check out I am able to inform the concierge that I need a taxi to Paddington Station and he goes out and hails one – it is the least one can expect from a 4-star hotel that caters to business clientele even though the rooms have diminished to perfunctory status without flair or sophistication in style – Gosh! I have stayed in better 4-star business hotels, also belonging to the Accor group.

This time, the receptionist tried to call up a taxi, and when he learnt that it might take 10 to 15 minutes he said there were no taxis, when he could have managed the information better by asking if I did have 15 minutes to wait.

However, I brought the issue of the concierge going out to hail a taxi and he said there was no concierge employed in the hotel anymore, which was strange because I have seen people man that concierge desk during my stay.

Not if I could help it

Besides, there were 4 people at the reception, it was not busy and seeing that I also use a cane he could have asked one of his colleagues to hail one – no, in the end, I had to drag my luggage out onto the street and cross the road to hail one.

That hotel has lost a customer just because they had allowed poor customer service personified in their staff to destroy confidence, interest and loyalty.

It is very likely, I would not return to that hotel; if they ever get the opportunity for me to review this blog radically. I am for now done with Novotel St. Pan Crap.