This is my year in review blog post, and oh what an exciting blog post it’s going to be!
2011 was a good year of blogging for me. I managed to kick my addiction of compulsively checking Google Analytics to see how many hits I was getting and instead was able to focus more on just getting words on the screen and out into the interwebs.
With that being said I did crack open Google Analytics today to do a post-mortem of the year and I must say I’m very pleased!
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When is there time to think? Or rather, when is there time to write? When all the hours of the day are spent concentrating to create feats of engineering how can I then kick back and let the literary imagination flow?
I’ve long struggled with these conflicting desires. Throughout the day I code. I wrestle with logic and math to bring to reality the ideas of how a website should behave. And more often than not when then day is done I’m left exhausted, my mind wrung out and needing some valuable time to rest undisturbed.
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This blog has been updated to the latest version of WordPress, version 3.3 ‘Sonny’. This new version comes with an improved admin experience, enhanced uploader, and a lot more. Check out the blog announcement on WordPress.org and watch the video to see what is in this upgrade.
If you use WordPress I wholeheartedly encourage you to upgrade your installation. Not only do updates bring about great new features but they also always come with increased security, making your blogging experience safer and secure.
I haven’t delved too far into all the changes WordPress 3.3 offers but I know I’m already digging the new admin experience.
Go upgrade now and enjoy a new and improved WordPress. 
I write a lot here about my difficulties writing. This is kind of oxymoronic as when I do write, the topic is about how I can’t write. Yet because I’m writing about how I can’t write I actually have written something – despite the subject of the written work being how I can’t do what I just did.
I hope the previous paragraph made some iota of sense. I just rolled out of bed and this is honestly the first thing I did this morning that exercised my brain. So obviously the cobwebs are still a little crowded in there as I haven’t fully shaken them free.
Blogging is mostly a thankless act. Most days that I update this blog I have no way to know if anyone read my new post. No one is commenting on each and every post with something to add to the conversation because maybe there isn’t much to add.
Yet I continue to blog and share whatever thoughts I can gather. I do it out of some self-centered need to express myself online. Some want to make my voice heard amidst the sea of internet voices.
I’ve read countless articles about how the secret to blogging is to do a guest blogging post on someone else’s more popular blog, or to pick one topic and stick to it as tenaciously as you can. Find a niche and talk about it at length. I don’t have a niche on this blog. The only niche I’d be able to say I have is the niche of ‘me’. And what the niche of me talks about varies on a daily basis, making it harder to pigeonhole the blog but also harder to know what to expect.
So in many ways the reason I don’t get many comments on posts is my own self doing: I’m not talking consistently about what people expect to read. Yet if I were to start doing that then I’d feel as if I had sold out, and would no longer be blogging for me but for some other purpose.
But that’s why I started blogging. For me. And right now I still want to blog for me. I’m sure it’ll evolve as more time passes – I have yet to even hit 2 years of blogging – but right now I’m well and happy just rambling about things that I like to say.
Every so often I get the idea that if I were to blog underneath a different name I’d blog more often. I get some weird idea that because I actually blog as my ‘real life self’ that I’m inhibited in what I say and how I often I post.
To that I call bullshit. If I wanted to blog more often I would – pen-name be damned. The only real reason I don’t blog as much as I want to is because other things in my life get in the way. Like work. Or social life. Or just living. You know, that thing that is done away from the computer. Something that I don’t take part in nearly enough.
Sadly I don’t call bullshit on myself nearly enough. Sometimes I’ll get so carried away that the magic bullet to get myself to write more is to create a new anonymous alias for myself, register a new domain name as anonymously as possible, and then blog posts will just start to flow.
That’s a crock of shit and I know it. Although sometimes I wish there was a magic bullet to get me to post more. And then I start setting up a new WordPress blog, and before I know it I’ve wasted 3 hours not writing a blog post and having nothing to show for my time.
Ah well. So it goes.
Sometimes it’s very hard to predict how many hits this blog will get.
For example today I wasn’t expecting many hits on this blog. I was expecting to get a lower than average amount of hits. After all it’s only Tuesday, and I only wrote a little post earlier about my reaction to the new Google Reader design. All in all I was expecting small things from this blog today.
Yet surprises remain unexpected! Dare I say – surprising. This blog hit its average amount of views today and I have no clue how. I’m not stressing about the positive result, just again curious and fascinated at how unpredictable page views can be.
Of course if I had posted something very interesting today I would have expected a fair amount of hits. Yet even then, history has proven to me that is not always the case.
Ah well, so it goes. Glad people enjoy reading things here.
When I make a new blog post I never know what to expect. Some posts I can predict will do better than others, however there is no way to know exactly how a post will be received.
Some posts I’m hoping for some positive feedback – or any feedback at all. Sometimes I just want to know that my post was read. Every time I post I eagerly follow my blog stats, tracking how many page views I receive for the post.
I’m not going to lie: I like seeing my posts get a lot of hits. Sometimes I’ll see the post count of my blog spike with no apparent reason and I’ll set out on a little crusade to find out why. Usually I’m unable to pinpoint the source but it puts a nice smile on my face and encourages me to write more.
When I started this blog I did it for my own reasons. I wanted a central place that I could share whatever, whenever. There were many times that I’d sit down to start a blog post, begrudging the self-assigned task. When I first started writing I would get a few views or none at all. It was at those times that I had to search within for the reason why. I didn’t find a good answer all the time. Sometimes it was just a curt ‘because’ and then I’d set back to writing.
The reasons I had for writing are still true today. However now I get many more hits per blog post. It’s encouraging and flattering and spurs me to write and create better.
The first picture app I started using was Picplz on my Android phone. There wasn’t any other options for me to go to. At the time the app that had all the media in a tizzy was Instagram – and they were iPhone only.
But I wanted to post my pictures – easily and quickly too! And starting out picplz handled that quite handsomely. So I went on my merry way, snapping pictures on my Droid and using picplz to get them online quickly.
And then the Verizon iPhone came out and I gobbled one up as fast as I could. I installed both picplz and Instagram on my phone right away – Instagram to try out and picplz to resume my account.
I tried out Instagram quickly and swiftly After running through its basic feature set I deleted it out of a sense of loyalty to picplz.
I should let it be known that when I first started using Picplz its quite affable and friendly founder – Dalton – quickly followed my account and liked a picture of mine. I further went on to write an unofficial WordPress Picplz widget that was again liked by Dalton and praised by other Picplz users. All of this instilled in me a relatively strong sense of loyalty to Picplz that I find kind of hard to break.
So today I’m on my second day of vacation in Miami and ready and willing to share my experiences through pictures. I would normally turn to Picplz to help me accomplish this task however recently two points of friction have caused me to not use Picplz as frequently.
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One year ago yesterday I started this blog. I wrote then that “This [blog] is the start of a beautiful relationship” and today I still agree with that sentiment. I wasn’t confident that I would be able to follow-through with my commitment to keep this blog maintained and updated but I have proven my own inner insecurities wrong. After one complete year I’m still here, writing to my heart’s content, loving the unsolicited workload I’ve tasked myself with.
And despite being good for an entire year I’m still not completely confident that I can keep writing. I suppose it’s just my negativity rearing its head, but my ability to write has of late come with increased effort. Perhaps I’m in a writing dry spell, which is causing posts to become more of an effort, or perhaps its due to a rapidly busying social and work life (which I see slowing in intensity and demand during February). Whatever the cause it is no excuse to shy away from my stated goal of keeping an active blog. If a blog post must take two hours instead of one so be it. After all, it’s not like I’m writing for my health, but more for my own enjoyment.
And so here we go, into year 2 of ‘hairy’ blogging. What knotted messes will be uncovered this year? Let’s see!
WordPress 3.0, the blogging software that runs this blog, has been officially released to the world – and I have never been more excited.
When I clicked over to the official WordPress blog on Thursday afternoon (which I have been doing every day religiously for the past two weeks) I grew extremely giddy to see the new post read: “WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious””. I was practically jumping in my seat itching to update this blog and begin to play with all the new features that WordPress 3.0 offers. Unfortunately I had a Psychology quiz in two hours that I had to keep studying for. I managed to practice a level of self-restraint that I didn’t know I had.
After my Psych quiz was over and I was finally alone at home I upgraded this blog to 3.0. And then life kicked into overdrive on Friday leaving me with no real time to play until today.
As you can no doubt see I’ve changed the theme of my blog yet again. I have chosen the new default theme for WordPress 3.0 named Twenty Ten. It’s a very clean theme: very easy to read, highly functioning formatting of the website, and it takes advantage of the new features WordPress 3.0 offers. I am going to perform a few tweaks and twirks (I don’t think that word exists) in the near future to get the theme performing as I want it to. I think you’ll agree that it’s much easier on the eyes than the previous theme.
So WordPress 3.0 is out and I am just unbelievably excited. Click through to see a video which highlights some of the best new features WordPress 3.0 has to offer.
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