Blog365 Wrap-Up

On New Years Day this year I published my ambition to be a member of Blog365, a meme or contest or challenge or something to post every day of the year except Leap Day. So now it is time to reconcile.

The definition of “posting” was left purposefully vague so that as broad a definition as possible was allowed. Since at the time I had three blogs going (the other two are Dowd Report – the world’s best and only blog devoted (and we mean that in the creepiest sense of the word) to NYT columnist Maureen Dowd and China Sights – a photojournal of my trip to China in 2007), I figured that as long as I posted to one of them, it counted. Even by that standard, I didn’t quite make it. A check of my blog against the calendar shows that there were 50 days when I didn’t post anything anywhere. Some of that is due to vagaries of the clock and calendar. If you look at days where I made two posts either the day before or the day after, the count goes down to 32 days.

My longest dry spell was from June 29 to July 7 when I was on vacation in Cape Cod. Our rental house had wifi service which was in almost constant use by one teenager or another, but I kept busy enough touristing and socializing to not really have time to blog. I saw that as a good thing. Towards the end of September I also inexplicably went a week without any new material on Foma*, even though I did make four posts for the Dowd Report.

By another measure, I more than met the spirit of the challenge. Here is the count of the total posts I made by blog:

Foma* - 217
Dowd Report – 152
China Sights – 44
Total – 413

That exceeds the rate of one post a day by comfortable margin. During the past year I also uploaded 1,457 pictures to my Flickr account, which by the rules of Blog 365 count as posts. But I mostly did those in bulk, so I’m not taking credit for those.

I put China Sights on hiatus after the Olympics and Maureen Dowd went on an extended leave without warning me, leaving Foma* all alone as my flagship blog for December.

Did I enjoy the challenge? I sure did. It made for a lot of logistical planning and decision making. I did manage to blog every single day of my trip to England which I probably wouldn’t have done had I not been under the challenge.

Am I going to do it again? Not on your life. Judging my the number of missed days, I clearly am not up to the rigors of that kind of schedule. I admire daily bloggers, but I just don’t have the schedule flexibility or the creativity to keep it up on a semi-permanent basis.

So what does the next year hold? Foma* is definitely not going anywhere. I will continue to post 3-4 times a week or as the mood strikes. At any given time I have a backlog of a half dozen post ideas I’m kicking around as well as my snap reactions to current events, so I hope I won’t burn-out anytime soon.

I do need to do some work on the plumbing of the blog, which takes away from the actual blogging. The template needs a refresh and I would like to upgrade my header to something splashier.

I’m a “learn by doing guy” and teaching myself video-editing is something that is on my agenda. I have a huge backlog of video from my trip to China two years ago that I would like to futz with, although I’m not sure what is the best way to release that.

And I do love all my readers which is why I am such a BlatantCommentWhore. I know there are a lot of competing blogs, podcasts, social networks, and porn sites out there way more fascinating than my humble exercise in narcissism, so I appreciate the time you spend reading my incoherent ramblings. You can’t have an exhibitionist without a victim and I thank you for continuing to walk past my virtual front porch.

Finally I want to wish everybody a Happy New Year. And the Fourth Annual National Just Read More Novels challenge begins tomorrow.