Newer readers may not have noticed that there is an instructive dimension to Cantankerous Old Coots. Early on Justin and I created a series of Cantankerous Old Coots Lessons designed to help fledgling Coots perfect their cantankerosity. Starting with Lesson 1 “Let it out” up to Lesson 21 “Cantankerosity lasts” we provided direction to COC wannabees. We even established Cantankerous Old Coots University with an ebook containing augmented versions of lessons 1 through 5. It was a glorious vision. We would help create a more perfect world by communicating the COC vision as stated in our manifesto and help spread the COC message to the initiated..
Coots in action
We imagined that COC would wake up hundreds of sleepwalkers from the boring tedium that is 21st century life. We were certain that slowly- over time- our readership would grow and more Coots would join with us to spread the spirit of cantankerosity. We were wrong.
COC gets read but as far as we can tell, no one wants to join the ranks, take the lessons seriously and move into serious cantankerosity. Our most popular post continues to be Coots Lesson 13 “Same to you.” a thoughtful and timeless lesson from Justin about standing up for yourself. It isn’t clear to us why this lesson resonates so well with our readers but as we struggle to understand our reader’s thinking we wonder why their pleasure with Lesson 13 doesn’t cause them to check out Lesson 12 or even Lesson 14.
Then I get it. Our readers are indeed Cantankerous Old Coots. They can’t be bothered with the effort required to locate those other lessons just like Justin and I can’t be bothered with creating a web page with links to all the lessons. This is the most encouraging news we’ve had in months because it means that we are finding Coots and Coot wannabees out in the blogosphere. They have found COC and appreciate the message and like good Coots, they are not willing to waste any time or effort to make us feel better. They have a mission to improve their quality of their lives. Improving the quality of our lives here at COC, not so much.
We clearly didn’t connect all the dots when we developed our business model here at COC. We talked a cantankerous game but measured our results using ordinary standards. What this suggests is that more people might enjoy the COC Lessons if we got off our double-wide asses and created an index of those lessons with convenient links. Being user friendly and customer service focused is not generally the prime directive here at COC This is going to take some time to sort out. Stay tuned.
