​It was a few weeks ago when it occurred to me that this day was approaching. The day that would mark exactly one year after we published our final issue of the Similkameen News Leader. I remember parts of the week leading up to it and recall telling myself that it would be the last time I would be doing several of the tasks. In a way, I think that helped me through it.
 
I remember how stressed both of us, my wife Brenda and I, had been part way through the second quarter of 2016 and not seeing much of an increase in business. In fact, it was a very tough year that came on the heels of two difficult years before it. I was skipping paying our wages so we could pay other bills and did some incredible juggling to get through.
 
By the time I was convinced there was no bouncing back, I knew there was no choice. The weight just lifted off of both of us when the date was decided for our final issue – July 26, 2016. We print the day before the actual paper date so it was all coming to an end on Monday, July 25, 2016. The trip to the print shop in Penticton was different. I think we both felt relieved.
 
I have had several times to look back and reflect on what we did when we were in business. I think we had a solid product that told the news without a lot of drama or sensationalization. We took a particular path and followed it throughout the 18.5 years of publication. It was the path I took the paper in the 12.5 years I owned it as well. I wanted integrity and truth on our pages.
 
To this day – and I’ve said this repeatedly – we still have people telling us they miss our paper. This still happens on average once a week. It has made the transition a bit easier as a result. What I did not expect was to bring the brand back to life earlier this month in connection with a wildfire that was burning 10-kilometres North of the community.
 
It felt good to be doing something again with our product even if it was just online and just for a couple of weeks. In a way it reminded me that I’ll always have a connection within the local media community. It also reminded me that our style of telling the news is still an effective way to get the word out without a lot of additional fluff or filler that can cloud the message.
 
So, what have we been doing otherwise? Well, Brenda has continued working on her home-based canning and preserving business called JamBusters! She has added several new products to her inventory and has continued to be excited about vending those items at various markets and craft fairs throughout the year. It has been a lot of fun for both of us, actually.
 
As for me, I’m still writing a lot as part of my home-based freelance writing business. I have a couple of ongoing contracts that are long-term and high volume. With that I have several smaller contracts and am also picking up a lot of one-time jobs. What this basically means is I have enough writing work to fill five or six full days per week. I am enjoying it a great deal.
 
I do miss many things about the newspaper business. However, the reality is that a year after closing the doors to our business we are well into our new careers. It was a lot of work, and although we are probably as busy now as we were then, it doesn’t feel as if it is work. I suppose that is the main indicator of where we are now and probably why it doesn’t seem like a year has passed.

​I recorded my 52nd podcast episode earlier today. It marked my first anniversary as a podcaster – something I never really saw myself doing prior to the first one I recorded. However, I must admit that I feel as if I have now completed a major step into my ‘new’ post-newspaper life. I can remember that it was this time last year we were pretty much close to wrapping up our final issue of the Similkameen News Leader.
 
It was both a scary and an exciting time for us. It was also a sad time for me in particular. I think that maybe one of the reasons why I finally chose to jump into the podcasting arena was to give me something different to do. It was also something that was so different to what I had been doing although it contained elements of my past two careers and a hobby all intertwined together. Plus, and probably more importantly, podcasting gave me an outlet and a distraction to put my focus on while others things were coming to an end.
 
The intertwining parts are kind of cool, now that I think about it. The podcasts include elements of both my radio and newspaper careers. They involve me researching and writing notes as well as recording the final product. The hobby element is webcasting that I have done for a total of seven of the last nine hockey seasons for the local Junior B team. During them I find myself doing a whole lot of adlibbing which also has some of my radio experience attached to it. The podcasts are virtually all adlibbed with minimal notes to follow.
 
I prefer to do most of that kind of stuff with that kind of style. I like to think it sounds more ‘real’ as opposed to slick, polished and bordering on fake. That’s not to say I don’t have standards in what I do, but I just would rather adlib something than put hours into a well-crafted product. Part of that is because I think my product is not-so-bad in the first place. To be able to adlib my way through 52 weeks’ worth of them I think is pretty awesome.
 
What’s even more awesome is that people are listening. There are over 100 direct downloads per month of my podcasts. There have also been almost 1,000 direct feed hits monthly of the podcasts as well. I couldn’t tell you where that stands in comparison to similar programs because I don’t follow those stats. For all I know I have either a hit or a dud. It’s not too important to me at this point as I’m just having so much fun doing it.
 
So to celebrate my first anniversary as a podcaster I recorded an episode that looked back at the Top 10 Most Downloaded Episodes from my channel. It was fun for me to sort out the data to see what they were and I think I was a bit surprised that the top few included an episode I had only recorded two weeks ago. I guess it was nice to see that it wasn’t all old episodes on the list and that there was a cross section. As for how long I plan to keep recording weekly podcast episodes is concerned, who knows? I guess I’ll keep doing it as long as I still see some fun in it. You can find my podcasts on Podbean at “Ninja on the Loose” and they are all free to download.