I may have another year or two in me, to continue improving this site, writing the blog, and providing support via e-mail and the forum. After that, it may indeed be time for me to fade into the sunset.
What will happen to the site and how will you get answers for your questions, after I’m no longer here for you?
It’s still early, and I don’t have a definite answer. A few things are on the table so far, and hopefully a definite good choice will present itself in the next year or two. Here are a few of the things I’m considering and discussing with fellow practitioners:
1. Letting #endmyopia Go To The Public Domain
In this scenario, the paid course goes away and everything that is online is free and open to all. I would be closing the forum to new submissions and simply let the site sit static, as a reference to anyone who comes across it.
What appeals to me about this solution, is that the future of the site would be clear. No mucking with things by third parties, and we know that what is here now, while imperfect in innumerable ways, does work. By now there are many hundreds of participants who reported solid improvements, we have thousands of forum posts discussing specific questions, and a few hundred detailed blog entries as well.
It would be up to you to share the site and message, to keep it from fading into further obscurity. Much like an artist may finish a painting, the site would be a finished product, of sorts.
Of course there are several flaws in that idea – one of them being that the site curiously likes to break, all on its own, every so often. Besides that, updates have to be made to the backend of things, server bills must be paid, and there would be quite a volume of e-mails going entirely ignored.
So, we could go another way:
2. Giving The Site To A Group Of Rehabilitative Practitioners And Ophthalmologists
This would mean choosing a group of individuals and entrusting the care and feeding of the site to them. They would all have equal access and would decide amongst themselves who might add blog posts, answer support questions, and further the development of the site.
With this solution, we could also preserve the advertising and optional paid course, which do help spread the word and provide a good basis for participants to work on improving their vision.
A group would help ensure that at least somebody is going to be around to keep things going. There would also have to be consensus, and you would have access to multiple practitioners who share my own enthusiasm and method for vision improvement.
Downsides might be the fact that a group always leads to politics. Likewise, everyone could get busy or realize that this site is a lot of work, for not much (if any) compensation.
But of course there are other options as well.
3. Sell Or Gift The Site To One Rehabilitative Practitioner
Selling it in particular would help ensure that the site goes to someone serious about continuing the project. It would be run by one voice, no possible infighting by a group. Bills would be paid, and we’d know who is at the helm. I might also recuperate some of the cost of creating this project – though I never dared to assess how much this thing has actually cost me, so far.
Downside could be that someone with serious financial motivation might significantly raise prices and begin excluding some of the free improvement focused content from the blog. I had consultants tell me on countless occasions that this site could be a financial goldmine, if I were to treat it less like a charity and more like a real business.
Choices, choices …
4. Train A Replacement, Maintain Ultimate Control Over The Site
I have taken on dozens of apprentices over the years. Some come to mind who are truly brilliant practitioners. It’s quite possible that one of them might donate some time to keeping the site going, with blog posts and maintaining the forum. We could eliminate e-mail as a form of interaction and just keep the forum available for contributing participants. This would cut down a good 90% of the communication time spent on the site.
Likewise, someone could be paid to part time maintain the infrastructure of the site.
The downside, somebody crazy would have to be found for this. Who wants to work for free? Even without the thousands of e-mails, many of which of questionable merit, a practitioner can make a good living all while helping his clients recover their healthy eyesight. Who do the same, for free, on a medium that bring out all of the lunatics and incomprehensibly unreasonable individuals? This would also just be a stop gap, since I’ll eventually be too senile (or less than alive altogether) to keep things on its tracks.
Those, so far, are the main options I’m considering.
So What Do We Do?
For now, things will stay as they have been. If you are fortunate, you have found or will find this site in the next year or two, while I’m still around. After that, you could be far more fortunate, with someone much more capable and organized, running the site. Or you might be slightly less fortunate, with the stone henge of vision improvement blogs staring at you from its final resting place, telling you only what has already been told at some point in the past.
There is also a fifth option that I am working on, though this one is less than likely to materialize.
A holistic ophthalmology practitioner, previously finance guru, is among my circle of friends. He is truly brilliant, both intuitively as well as by education. The man has traveled the world, quite literally, to meet and discuss and receive schooling from many different viewpoints and many different types of practitioners. China, India, Russia, Europe, every way that vision improvement has been approached, he has experienced. There may not be another person alive with as much perspective on this subject.
The minor problem is his less than charitable view on the Internet as a medium. “People worth talking to” is somewhere in the rather colorful phrasing that you might hear when you bring up vision improvement vis-a-vis the Web. Not that we could blame him, the online personas of some of us aren’t always our very best foot forward.
As of this writing, you can only find this particular individual, if you are willing to travel to whichever far away places on the globe he might currently be exploring. While it does add some dramatic appeal, Indiana Jones style, it is also profoundly unnecessary, since you can certainly just read this blog, or take the paid course, and improve your vision. One need not venture into some tropical jungle, just to get basic advice of strain management and positive stimulus.
Still, this would be my choice for someone to continue the site. You would certainly enjoy some of the stories, as well as get the best possible advice on vision improvement.
Daydreams aside, I hope that you are finding this article while enjoying some good distance from your computer screen, and an appropriate prescription for the task. And if you have time to help engage other health minded destinations on the Web about vision health, I’d be delighted for new connections and discussion.
