Four Years

When I typed up yesterday's post on passing 2015's word count, it also occurred to me that it's now been over four years since this blog's inception, so a bit of reflection is in order. Back in 2012 I created this blog purely for the purpose of chronicling my 2012 trip to Europe and I didn't have any plans for it once the journey was complete and all the posts related to it had been published. Once the final travelogue post was published, I proceeded to upload some photos and after that the blog went dormant for a month. I came back to the blog to publish the first of the few cooking-related posts I've done over the years, and awhile later I got the idea to write up a number of posts based on interesting experiences I had while in Europe. Those stories wrapped up at the end of November 2012 and at that point I could have just called it quits, but I decided to keep writing. I did several "poems," though I don't think they count as poetry, on people I remembered from high school and started a short series on restaurants I liked to patronize.

But then, on February 9, 2013, I published my first gaming-related post. It was the first in a three-part series about games that I thought deserved sequels, and I think it's at that point that this blog started changing into the form that it has now. This transition would take some time, and there was even a long period in 2013 from mid-May to the start of October where nothing was published, but the process had begun.

December 2013 and the first four months of 2014 saw another milestone when I published a countdown of my favorite games from the PS3/Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii era (a list that I should probably consider updating) and then in late April and early May, 2014, we saw the beginnings of more serious attempt on my part to publish more regularly. This effort got off to a great start in May and June of that year but then fell apart and the blog only saw three new posts from July through November. In December 2014, I was able to kick two posts out of my lazy self, but in January 2015 I finally overcame my inherent sloth and got in the rhythm of publishing regularly. The goal was to publish at least three times per month and I kept myself to that the entire year. June, July, and August were comparatively prolific months that year, and I was also pleased that I was able to hold to the publishing goal while I was overseas on my second Europe trip.

I finally finished both the travelogue posts and the side stories posts from the 2015 Europe trip in February 2016, and once again I was at another juncture point. It was very tempting to take some time off from writing, but I knew that writing is sort of like running - if you stop, it's hard to start up again. So, the next day after finishing up with Europe 2015, I started grinding out new writing pieces, starting with a story about going to the cinema to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I kept writing more posts, most of them short, just to keep the mental muscles moving. The publishing schedule took a few weeks to sort out, but I eventually arrived on the one I'm currently using, whereby I publish five times a week, Monday through Friday, except for special circumstances such as the trip I just got back from.

It's taken over four years to get to this point. I have no idea where this road leads; maybe it will take me to some sort of paid writing career or maybe it will forever remain the obscure online ramblings that people like you, the reader, somehow have come across. Some of you have only recently started reading this blog, some have been around for a year or so, and there's two or three of you that have been around since the beginning. Regardless of when you started, thanks for being part of this journey. Here's to another four years, and beyond.