2021 PaddlingLight Update

This is an annual housekeeping post to inform loyal readers, subscribers and readers who get notifications about the 2021 plan for PaddlingLight.

First, I’m personally embarking what I’m calling the year of lightness. Each day, I’m getting rid of something. It’s been really fun for the last couple of weeks finding and either selling, donating or throwing an item a day.

While not really part of that (but inspired by it), I’ve deleted PaddlinghLight’s social media pages. I looked at the traffic coming to this website from the social media accounts and decided it wasn’t worth trying to maintain or develop the social media pages.

The biggest downside to doing this was that the Facebook page had a good amount of discussion on it for certain topics and posts. Those discussions are now gone. It’s unfortunate that they didn’t happen here. I miss the days of blogs and having conversations and cross conversations across several blogs. Social media took that away, and it’s likely not coming back.

I’ll still be writing here, etc… The biggest change is you’ll need to contact me via email instead of via messenger or other social media. I still have my photography accounts on Facebook and Instagram and my personal Twitter account.

I’m not sure what this year’s publishing schedule will look like, but I am planning a trip. It follows long forgotten canoe routes that were probably last paddled in the late 1800s or early 1900s. There’s one permitting issue that I still need to work through, but I’m hopeful that we can make it happen. For the trip, I’ve been researching the route on old maps. As I’ve worked through the maps, you can see the portages disappear as the years go on. At one time, they would have been used often. I’m sure as I work on the trip that I’ll write a bit more about it. I’m taking a GIS class to produce a paddling map as well, so that should make the site this year. It would be cool to develop a directory of American-made and Canadian-made paddling gear manufacturers. I live in Minnesota and there are a ton of companies based here. That last one sounds ambitious, but I’ve been thinking about doing it. Other than that, I hope to do at least one new article per month.

I’d be able to do more if I made more money from this website to justify the time spent on it. In a round about way, if you like what I do here and want to buy me a monthly beer, you can do that now via Facebook. Facebook allows my photography page to have reoccurring subscriptions. It runs $5 a month. You can sign up here: https://www.facebook.com/becomesupporter/122323837827341/

Anyway, that’s the plan with PaddlingLight this year. I’ll keep it running for one more year for sure. I hope you continue to follow its journey as we paddle on this river of life.