insane fantasy or realistic project?

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:49:21 GMT

Insane fantasy or realistic possibility? (I would appreciate it if people read the whole thing and commented honestly.) Years ago (2005 or 2006?), I started a blogsite, www.allthingshuman.com (name based on the line from Terence: “I regard nothing human as alien to me”). I posted links to news stories on all conceivable subjects (usually with some snarky headline or comment as I currently do on FB), a Poem of the day, a Game of the week (from a database I have of 60,000+ games not available on ChessBase), an occasional essay on something (see https://allthingshuman.com/category/original-content/ for some examples), etc. See https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/www.allthingshuman.com for archived pages. In 2006, I went to the Chess Olympiad in Turin, Italy and live-blogged from there. Before leaving, I promoted the site in the chess media. At one point, I was getting a few dozen (maybe even in the hundreds) daily views. Then the site went dark for nearly a decade. First, it was infected by a virus, then seized by a cybersquatter. Eventually, I got it back and started posting fairly regularly but I never bothered promoting it and never had more than a handful of viewers. I had vague ideas of doing more with it but never executed on them. Then, three years ago, I took a full-time job at a law firm and no longer had the time to do anything with site beyond the occasional post.

Three years later, I definitely need to make some changes. I just turned 67, am working too many hours (and suffering burn-out), not spending enough time with my son and wife, and am just generally exhausted and depressed. Retirement is not an option. I never expected to have a wife and kid and itinerant chess journalist/part time lawyer/legal assistant was enough to live on (barely) but I have no savings and we live paycheck to paycheck.

Which brings me back to allthingshuman. Is it possible to turn this into a second career that would pay the bills? I need to earn $8 to $10k a month to keep the household solvent. Is it conceivable/possible that I could get a thousand people to pay $10 a month for a daily poem, weekly chess game not available elsewhere, occasional essay, news links accompanied by snark, links to unusual occurences, signs from above that defy interpretation, etc.? I could add reviews of books, restaurants, etc. I could maybe offer a monthly or so podcast. I went through my contacts and have several published authors, grandmasters, experts in various fields. If I could persuade a few of them to give me an hour of their time, I could cover, if not all things human, a lot of things from backpacking to finance to hypnosis to science, etc.

Thoughts? Opinions? Advice on how to make it work? Absolutely bonkers or vaguely plausible?

comments

moechus

insane fantasy or realistic project?