What About 2011?

Wednesday, 29 December 2010

So now I’m wondering if I should keep this daily blog things going into 2011, too. Really, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but now that 2010 is almost done, it’s time to make a decision.

Here are some problems with this write-something-everyday format:

For one thing, as you might have noticed, I cheated. A lot. On most posts, you will notice that I wrote about 3 or even four days at a time. I tried to write about each day in the present tense, but sometimes the day had already passed several days ago. This made things tough, because the longer I waited to post a blog (usually due to being  busy), the more I had to write, and if I didn’t have time in the first place, then I really got backlogged when I had to write about 3 or 4 days.

Second, it’s hard to write about some days. I hate to admit it, but some days really had nothing that special going on: I got up, went to work, came home, ate dinner, and, well, nothing that remarkable. So I would write about the weather, or some other websites I found that day, or just some random stuff I was thinking about. At the other extreme, sometimes there was too much to talk about for one day. So this was another way I would cheat: I would find some odd way to squeeze a topic into a specific day. Like this blog post where I wrote about my playlist being played on KQRS several days after it had happened. Why did I do that? Because the day they played my playlist was Halloween, and I figured it was better to write about Halloween, so I instead waited until my “prize package” came in the mail to write about it.

And, sometimes, there were things I felt I shouldn’t talk about. For example, I didn’t think it would be prudent to write about being annoyed with my kids, or having arguments with my wife (or any other good friend); and I thought it was probably wise to not talk about issues relating to my job. I also figured no one wanted to hear too much about any financial issues or health problems (well, if I was really sick that might be interesting, but no one wants to hear, “I had a mild headache all day”). So, when I was sick for several days, I had to stretch to find some other things to talk about. Sometimes that was tough.

Then there’s the issue of turnover: sometimes I really wanted what I wrote to be on the top of my blog for more than one day. If I wrote something I felt was important or note-worthy, then I didn’t want it to get buried in the avalanche of posts. This is tough when I’m trying to write something every day.

And speaking of note-worthy topics, occasionally, I would write a post and think “there, this will generate some comments,” or, “I’ll be interested to see what people think about this,” but then no one says anything. Kind of disappointing.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts.