Barker, Baker, Booker, Blogger, ( #AtoZChallenge )

 

   

          Blogger?  I am a blogger, but I can't say I'm making much money doing it.  Then, I don't really pursue blogging with any great degree of seriousness.  In my early days of blogging I was pretty avid about the whole idea.  After all, that's the main reason I came up with doing this Blogging from A to Z April Challenge thing.  Over the years I've drifted away from my big blogging enthusiasm that beset me in those first few years.  Things happened and my attentions have been drawn elsewhere.  Not to say that I'm ever going to give up blogging, but for now it's not a big pursuit of mine.  For now blogging is a placeholder for something that might come up later where my blog will serve a real useful function.  Big ideas on hold for a moment I guess. For the time being, blogging is a dalliance rather than any real occupation, though sometimes I put as much work into it as I have many of my past jobs.

        Throughout my years in show business I've come into contact with barkers and I'm not talking about dogs.  If the term seems unfamiliar to you, a barker is a "talker" in front of some sort of attraction at a fair, carnival, circus, or some other public function.  The barker is the person out front who is drawing a crowd and giving the sales pitch for the attraction they are fronting.  Since I'm not much of a shouter who can glibly come up with things to say to persuade people to buy whatever it is that I'd like to "sell" then the art of barking is not my schtick. 

       And though I've baked things at home, I don't think I'd want to be a baker.  My youngest daughter is a pretty good baker.  For a while she was pretty busy with her home based baker business in New Jersey.  She would regularly post pictures of some of her masterful cakes and other assorted baked goods on Facebook.  As a regular job she also worked as a baker in various restaurants.   She really needed an industrial type kitchen to sustain her own business properly but so far has not gone that route.  She's good at the baking, but maybe not so much at the business part of things.  Let's face it--to have a successful business then you've got to have someone who understands the ins and outs of running a business.

    In 1966 after my family moved to Tennessee, my father started a booking agency that he worked as a sideline out of our home.  He did pretty good at it for a while, but maybe it got to be too much for him doing it in tandem with his regular full time job.  Or maybe the show booking business was no longer as lucrative as it had been in the years prior. Or maybe he just wasn't getting the return for his investment, which is probably the downfall of many a business.  Over the years I've dabbled in show booking.  It was not especially lucrative for me either.  Maybe I just didn't try hard enough.  But maybe I wasn't interested enough to keep pursuing that route.

 

      So for me it's been no to barking, baking, or booking.  But I guess blogging is still there as an option.  Arlee Bird--Blogger.  Not bad I guess.  Or maybe I can do better.  Time will tell.

        What "B" jobs have you done?   Have you done any jobs related to baking or cooking?   When is it time to give up on a business dream?