Blogging about bogging is still a sin...

... but I'm going to do it anyway.

Without any fanfare, this blog moved into Version 2.0 at the end of January and I started posting more frequently. In fact, I made sure that I posted every day in February. I wanted to see what would happen if I threw myself back into the daily grind that I walked away from last summer, the grind I said I thought might be sapping my creative juices, and which I later thought might be a source of creative mojo. I thought that conscious daily blogging for a month straight (even the shortest one) would let me know the score.

Here's the score, or at least the tally (click to embiggen):


I actually wrote a bunch of things worthy to be called essays - eleven of them, or 39% of the posts. Most of them were around 500 words, although two were twice that long and a few shorter - quite similar to what I assign my students. They all look to be pretty good composition exercises; while they weren't really long form, they did give me an opportunity to play with structure and voice. Not a bad batting average.

The next largest section was diary-blogging at 25%. This is an odd category because entries could actually represent craft, although they are frequently closer to free-writing. A quarter of the posts in this category seems a little high.

I posted four link farms, 14% of the total. This mainstay of blogging seems cheap 'n' easy, but it's harder than it looks to build a coherent post around links. Three posts, 11%, focused on movie reviews, two short ones and one longer one. Any more, and I'll be creeping into LNTAM territory. The same percentage represents pure junk - posts without any structure to them, probably posted late at nght to keep the streak going. That's definitely too high. Bringing up the rear were two creative projects, a video parody and a song parody, for 7%, and one light analysis of a photo.

So, what response to this mix of messages? The posts generated 41 comments over the course of the month (one-and-a-half per post), and here's what the visits looked like:

So, it looks like there's a small coterie of folks who are interested enough in this stuff to keep coming if I produce it. So maybe I will. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of my life.

As for today: here are a couple of links!

Just for Johnbai (click for source):


Click Poppy's picture for the science of kindness: