Contrary to how it may seem, I have not left this site for dead. I periodically visit since it still receives quite a bit of traffic. The site went inactive for a number of reasons.
(1) First and foremost, I ran into an issue hosting images. Rather than do a workaround on the blogger platform, I hired someone to create a new site. I bought the domain, paid the website designer half, and was in talks with the them about what I wanted.
Unfortunately, that fell through and I was left with a new site that wasn't to my liking. You can actually visit it here - https://nielkpatelcom.wordpress.com. The person I hired didn't seem to care to continue finishing the site. They were happy with what they got and decided more work for the full payment wasn't worth it. Go figure.
I manually saved on a hard drive the things I liked and one day may carry it over to a new site. There aren't any plans to create a new site yet, but you never know.
(2) Coaching took more of a priority. Whether it was classes or helping friends and family, I was more involved with programming and advising in a competition prep role. It was fun.
That's all out the window since the pandemic began earlier this year. I no longer coach, but keep reading and educating myself on topics as I've always done. It's amazing to see how I still connect information from so many years ago to something I might come up with on the spot. It would make for great content, but at this time I have no real desire to provide education to other trainees and coaches. This coincides with the next point, but also:
I've learned that people learn what they want to learn
Let that sink in and then think about it.
(3) The shift in social media and content consumption has changed drastically in the last few years. The current atmosphere has users with a shorter attention span than previously. Content now reflects that and you'll see very short pieces of content that are posted. Most of this gets viewed and scrolled passed in someone's feed.
Many sites I used to follow no longer publish articles like they did before. My writing back then was to discuss and explain topics in-depth. Even with all the editing I did to make the articles concise and to the point, they were still fairly long and dense.
It didn't make sense to continue.
So that's where we are right now. I miss coaching and teaching others, but with how things are right now I'll just observe and see where things go.
But with that being said, I'm always available for questions and will stop by here from time-to-time. I can be reached by email at nielkpatel425@gmail.com or on Instagram at instagram.com/niel.patel (although I don't post there anymore either).
If you want something a little more comprehensive such as online programming and coaching, I do offer that. It's $150 per month. If you're in northern NJ and want two in-person sessions per month, then it goes up to $200 for each month. Signing up with a friend changes the rates to $130 and $175 respectively for each person.
I don't expect to get inundated with requests, but if for some reason that does happen I will be capping it at 4 people right now. That lets me continue my 9-5 job comfortably and not take on more than I can handle.
Other than that, feel free to drop me a line any time if you want. I still get emails from people who stumble upon posts I wrote years ago. It's nice to see people find my old posts useful and that I can help them out.
And always remember - Lift smart, stay strong!
