Thursday 17 December 2009

Oh no! I missed my blogiversary!

I actually missed my blogiversary, which was on December 8 - that was Tuesday last week. And that even though I had marked it in my calendar, to be sure I won't forget it.

But then the internet-less time came, and the trials and tribulations of the move, and the stacks of boxes distracted me, and I completely forgot the blogiversary. Even though I think that it really is something worth celebrating - a year is quite a bit of time, after all!

When I started this blog last December, I was not sure at all how blogging would work out for me. I knew, however, that I did want the blog to offer something new regularly. Some blogs I had already read for a good while did inspire me to do the blogging-daily thing, and the most important of those is Kristin Nelson's blog Pub Rants. No, it has nothing to do with watering holes, selling beer and snacks, it's short for "publication", and I really liked (and still like) her style of writing and the fact that - with very few exceptions - I could have a few minutes every day, reading the news from Kristin, half-way across the globe.

And now, after the first year of blogging, I am really happy I tried it. I have a bunch of regular readers (and commenters), and getting feedback on the things I do and the texts I write does feel wonderful. Posting weekdaily is by far not as difficult as I had feared. Of course there's the occasional day where I can't think of anything much, but there are a few strategies that help with that: I try to cover one topic only per post and store other ideas in the drafts section, I try to have one or two "emergency posts" completely pre-written in the drafts section, and I am just generally on the watch for bloggable things - interesting links and webpages, for example. And then of course I don't blog on the weekends, and I will take time off* for holidays, events and travelling, things where blogging would be difficult or troublesome. All that together makes daily blogging a fun thing to do for me, a nice way to start off my day, and I hope that it will stay like this for at least a year or two more!

* All that time off results in about 203 posts during the one year, which is about 0.5562 posts per day, or one post every 1.79 days. Which sounds much less impressive than "I blog daily". You see me humbled.

2 comments:

Cathy Raymond said...

Happy blogiversary!

As I've said, I see my blog as more of a "costume journal I let other people see" than a public commitment. Your procedure for stockpiling blog entries is a lot like mine, except I'm a lot less faithful.

a stitch in time said...

Thanks!
I think it fascinating that all those blogs in the internet show a somewhat different approach to blogging. There are the rant blogs, the journal blogs, the business blogs, the mixed blogs; those that update frequently and those that don't - and it all adds to the variety.
As for the faithfulness, well... posting daily is partly also something to trick myself into not forgetting that there's the blog to look after. I had briefly thought about posting once a week, or every second day, or in some other repeatable roster, but no matter which scheme, I was sure that this would always end with me forgetting that it's "the day to blog" and thus lead to lapses, and that those would eventually lead to longer blog silences. And that made the final decision to go daily much easier... after all, I can always recognise it's a workday as opposed to a weekend day. There are signs that just can't be overlooked, like the alarm clock, and no partner in the home while he is out at work!