A Year

I started this little experiment in online writing/publishing a year ago today. Compared to the total time I've been self-publishing on the Web (my first site, featuring reviews of comicbooks, debuted in 1995 and ran at the time on Windows 3.1) that's not much time, and compared to the time I've been writing off and on for low-circulation print publication (I was editor of a college issues journal in the mid-80's, published at first using WordStar on a CP/M system), it's no time at all. But it's still a milestone.

It's been 200-something entries, and not quite as many comments posted (not counting obvious spam, promptly deleted). I haven't set the world on fire, but I've attracted some attention from the world beyond the Hermitage (my home and webhosting facility). Interestingly, the kind of articles most often getting comments have been when I talked about local news items (the parents of sextuplets, a guy who died saving his boyfriend, and a victim of our occupation of Iraq). By far the most perennially popular article (in terms of hits, nearly all coming from search engines) is one entitled "Kiddie Porn, Snuff Films, Hate Crimes...". Go figure. (A recent article about the death of "kitty porn" writer Kate Worley has received an unusually high hit rate.) A more recent addition which has been nearly as popular lately as the porn/snuff article is "Al Gore Invented the Internet... or not". The leading movie review is "Sympathy for the Monster" about Charlize Theron's stellar Monster.

I wondered at first whether I'd keep up with the blog. After all, it was inspired in part by the boredom of being unemployed. But it's survived the time competition of full-time employment (for half of the year in question), and (currently) near-full-time employment combined with a mini-flood of freelance/consulting work. Maybe if I had someone in my life that I could actually talk to about... stuff, the blog would wither away from neglect. But I don't. {shrug}

So I'll keep at it. Talk at ya later.