On a Year in the Blogosphere

In which we take a trip down memory lane.

I don’t know what is harder to believe, that it has already been a year since I began this blog, or that I was able to blog for the whole year.  Either way we made it to a year and that’s pretty exciting.  So to celebrate I thought that I would remove the veil and let you all take a look at the inner-workings of my slice of the blogosphere.

You have probably never wondered what exactly goes into the planning process for this blog¹.  But I am going to tell you about it anyway.  Normally while I am writing one week's blog I think of some idea that I want to write about the next week.  Throughout the week portions of the post will come to mind.  I never pre-write anything, which sucks when I sit down to type and get hit with writer's block.  I do, however, think about what visuals I want a head of time so I can do some google searches.  This is all completely accurate except for the times it’s not.  There have definitely been weeks where I have had an idea in mind and scrapped it at the last minute (see last week).

Once I write the post I’ll run it through a spell checker on Word to catch any spelling or grammar problems.  Then I will read through it and catch a few more.  After it has been posted online inevitably I will find new problems every time I read it².

Here are some interesting facts about the last year of blogging:

• This is my 45th blog post.
• March had the most posts with six³.
• September, August and May 2009 each had the least with one.
• Since June 20th 452 people have read my blog.
• They represent 21 countries.
• July 6th marked the apex of daily visitors, clocking in at 31 visitors, thanks to On My Jams.
• I have 7 blogspot followers and 16 Google Reader followers.
• 31 posts had comments; no post was commented on more than my first post.
• I have been asked to edit (and did edit) two of my posts after they were up.
• I have deleted one post all together.
• Including this post I have had 132 different tags.
• The footnotes made their début on Friday, October 16th.
• They became a permanent fixture on November 8th⁴.

As far as my highlights for the year I would say that I had the most fun with the two On Random Thoughts postings.  I felt that my most creative moments came from On Fulfilling a Birthday Wish…Kind Of and On Scramping.  My favorite post, though, was probably On War On Film.

I have greatly enjoyed the last 12 months of blogging.  Especially when I decided that I was going to make it a habit to write something once a week.  While it has been a challenge in come up with topics to write about it has really pushed me to be creative and also just to write more.  I don’t know if it has done anything to improve my skill as an author, it certainly hasn’t done much for my spelling or grammar.

So what am I looking forward to in the next year of blogging?  Here are some things I have been considering.  Interviews, more personal stuff, Capri Sun⁵, more pictures that I took, and maybe, maybe, contests.

One of my favorite parts about this blog is the comments that I get⁶.  Unfortunately Google Reader makes it easy to not comment.  But I’d love to hear your thoughts about my first year of blogging.  So escape the clutches of the reader, venture over to the blogspot and let me know what you think.

Thanks for sharing this last year with me.  And get excited for Bravo Deploy Satchmo Year 2.
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¹ Or maybe you have, what do I know I'm not a mind reader.
² I am a terrible speller, and have an uncanny knack at missing any and all grammar mistakes.
³ That has since been decreased to five (we'll cover why in a minute).
⁴ To date I have used 157 footnotes.
⁵ I'm just going to keep on teasing this until I write it.
⁶ Except the crazy Chinese posts that come with a ton of links, its such a hassle to go in and deleted them.