2019 Review
A few weeks into the new year and it’s time once again to re-start my blog. Looking back at my 2018 Review, I had vowed to publish at least one blog post per month. I didn’t quite succeed, but I certainly learned some things along the way.
What Went Right
Vowing to publish one post per month was a success, even though I didn’t actually achieve it. I wrote one post January through September (though technically I had 2 posts in August). Most months it pushed me to write more, though sometimes I found myself “saving” a post until the next month.
I know that regularly posting is also something that is typically recommended for those who are trying to gaining readers/increase their audience. This year I received a few emails from the people Emacs community who had feedback on what I wrote–very exciting!
What Went Wrong
I knew that the last few months of the year would be the hardest; I always struggle with personal goals October through December. Missing a month also became a huge block to posting again. This compounded with a downside of “at least one post per month” in that I ended up publishing only one post each month.
By spacing my posts out monthly, I felt like I had to have a decent amount of content. Indeed, that’s pretty much how I’ve been blogging thus far: long, well thought out content, less along the lines of “status updates” or micro-blogging. Meaning, I often felt like I didn’t have enough to say to warrant a post. It also meant that the blog posts were more technical, less personal. Figuring out how much I want reveal about myself on this blog is an on-going struggle.
Looking Forward
I want to keep the one post per month rule, but set myself up for success later in the year. I’ll start by drafting a few posts that I can keep around and publish in November and December.
I would like to branch out from Emacs and Org-mode, but I honestly have so much fun with these! Emacs is also an easy topic which isn’t too personal or something that my work could possibly care about. I should also get around to some meta posts: why I encourage everyone to blog, how to build a personal site, my personal blog doctrine, etc.
I’d also like to add some more status-update like posts. I’m not sure the exact form these might take… I think keeping them out of my main blog index (but putting them in the RSS feed) might work? Or I could try to make use of twitter. Other blogs that I follow make use of ‘micro-posts’, title-only (title-less?) posts that appear visually different in the index.
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