WeblogPoMo — Halfway Point

May 16, 2024

Weblog Posting Month seems to be actually working out! I’ve published 15 posts to this site in May so far. That’s 16 consecutive days of posting, seeing as the TikTok ban post went out on the last day of April. This is a lot more than I’m used to posting! I thought it would be worthwhile to reflect on the experience so far.

First up, I’m happy I decided to do this. It’s been a bit stressful at times, but it’s been a nice reminder that sharing things on my own website can be fun. It’s also been a nice excuse to think more intentionally about what I want to do with this site going forward.

Back in the late 90s/early 2000s, I had a site that I would constantly blow up and rebuild. I wish I had’ve been better about keeping it around. Because it was so ephemeral, I wasn’t as uptight about posting random junk to it. I want to get back toward that level of carefree updates. Having to post daily has helped me get over myself a bit. Not every post needs to be a serious essay. Sharing links to random things I like has been a great time!

One slight downside to the format is that I’ve been saving things. Maybe in the future I’ll be more OK with posting multiple things in a day, but right now I feel like I need to have a queue of posts so I don’t break my streak. It’s not a big issue, but I’ll definitely post more sporadically once this is done.

There are some things on the backlog that I would like to write, but I know they’re going to take some time. I keep thinking I can do more writing on the weekends, but it hasn’t worked out that way so far. Most of these involve some programming or data analysis work before I can write the post. Those ideas may end up being used later.

Through Robb Knight, I saw a post by Barry Hess titled We Are the Curators of the Web. It’s a great piece, and it reminded me how much I’ve enjoyed reading other people’s blog posts. There’s something that feels so much more personal about reading things people post to their own websites.