My blog is a year old today. Time for some self-evaluation. It is said that over 90% of blogs are abandoned within a year. 80% will not make it over a month. The fact that I am still here is already good news and I am definitely not planning to go away. I would like to thank all of my readers for being with me, for liking, commenting and following, for agreeing or disagreeing with what I have to say. I appreciate your comments more than you know.
Past
I started this blog with modest aims, a more or less clear goal and tons of ideas. I always had big ideas and always a lot more than what I could possibly handle. I have plans for a douzen books (literally) that I do not have the time to write. I have to work, earn a living and a pay the bills. I would love to spend my time dedicated to writing but I cannot. Starting a blog to break up my ideas into manageable sizes seemed like a good idea. A practice, like doing scales on the piano. A once a week commitment seemed feasible. My point was not to create a large audience quickly but to have the freedom to play around with subject ideas without a serious commitment. I am glad I started, I enjoy doing it tremendously.
Present
My biggest problem is an overload if ideas. I keep making notes when something comes to my mind which happens with a much greater frequency than my actual postings. My backlog is 350+ and growing about five times faster than the blog itself. There are a few things I am missing. I would love to discuss what I am doing why and how, but I don’t know where. Things like: what is the optimal size of a post? Is it a problem that I am so all over the place? Should I be more structured? More or less personal? Should I focus on talking about libertarian ideas or keep reacting to the world around me when something stupid slaps me in the face?
Future
I have plans. Modest ones, but many of them.
I want to continue with the idea of related posts such as the Islam series, the nature of truth or my jail story. I will try to make a few series with not-so-obvious but articulated connections.
I am considering a page to offer organized links to the posts with short descriptions as there is no template in Wordpress that can offer this to me.
I’d like to start a Bullspeak dictionary with a little more lose definition that I used in my book “The Principles of Bullspeak” – explaining the bull in expressions such as fair share, progress, community, public, ordinary people, much the way I just did in my last ‘right winger’ post.
I also want to start a set I’d call wacky ideas and pet peeves
I will, in essence, keep doing what I have been doing for the past year. The only thing that may slow me down is that I may start another blog, this time about technology. Unlike this one, which is a private passion, that one should help me with my work. There are a few themes I want to write on, such as the socialist class theory theme I started, about libertarian political strategy and the different religions of the left. I would also like to address some of the weaknesses of Libertarian ideas, a little exploration of the individual – state – society trichotomy. At some point I will start something to increase my readership, but I don’t know when. For now I will just keep hoping that some of my readers like some of my posts enough to recommend it. Like it. Tweet it. Google + it. E-mail it. You got the point. When I started writing this post I wanted to learn a little more about blogging statistics. Naturally, I got many links, this one is worth sharing. It is a little dated and a little too long, but very enjoyable reading. Thank you again for being with me, keep reading, following, sharing.