The 500th post

This is my 500th post! Let’s celebrate…

Writing Diversity

Tags show broad categories that I’ve written more about than others. It won’t expose everything, but here are some of my most prolific tags. The first number is the count of unique posts I’ve written and the second is the count of quotes from others.

(note to self: it’d be really cool to graph these on a timeline to show how my interests have pivoted over time.).

Continuity

There are three dangers for anyone who runs their own website.

First, that they will cease adding new articles.

Second, that they will fiddle with it so much that they never write anything (see first point).

Third, that new writing will slowly migrate into another, more convenient, platform.

It’s a major milestone that my site is still active. The regularity of my logs, my quotes section (Stones), and the monthly newsletters I compile from its content keeps me going when I don’t want to write anything original for long stretches.

Sharing

It’s been two and a half years since I began publishing a newsletter that links back to this website. A small crowd of sixty-six lucky souls receive an email with summaries of the month’s logs, a quote, sometimes an original article, and a picture or two. I’ve deeply enjoyed receiving email replies from the posse, and the regular updates has really helped my friends and family feel closer to us. Some of my family even checks my website regularly for updates!

It’s been a year since I’ve syndicated with Mastodon (the social media software). I’ve enjoyed a few conversations on the platform, but I’m glad that most public writing begins on my site. The pieces are there to share my writing with a larger audience, especially with news that more social media platforms will be federating with Mastodon, but there’s no pressure.

Future Plans

I don’t have any future plans for the site except to keep writing.

If I was to make a quick try, I do periodically think about how I’m engaging other’s content and learning in public. Maybe something there?

I think it’d be cool to write more responses to other writing I’ve discovered on the Internet, but my frequency probably isn’t going to increase.

Learning in public has been more difficult than I had expected; the weight of all I’ve written slows me down. It’s a funny situation that I resist writing new content out of a vague sense that there’s endless amounts that need editing? I’ve considered various strategies, such as selecting a day to make edits, but nothing has notably reduced the tension.