Reflections on a month

I set myself a goal in June: “Gay a Day”, one post about something related to GLBT issues, culture, politics, etc. This goal had nothing to do with anything—it was a whim. It turned out to be harder than I imagined.

I should say first that I met my goal: Every single day that I posted something, except for the one day on which I couldn’t post anything due to Internet connection problems, I met the challenge. So, by that simple measure, I succeeded.

In the first part of the month, I often posted two or more times a day; by the end of the month, well, less so. All up, June 2011 ended up being my second most-blogged month (December 2009 had more posts). My goal is to have an average of one post per day, so June definitely helped make up for a slow start to the year.

I learned that daily blogging is no easy task—it’s not easy no matter how one gets content. The folks who amalgamate content from others—which is basically what I was doing—spend an extraordinary amount of time and effort. The folks who do original reporting deserve even more respect. I learned that I couldn’t do neither.

By the end of the month, I found myself checking my YouTube subscriptions, looking for something relevant. Even though I always added my own spin or commentary, I nevertheless felt this was somehow “cheating”.

I’m not paid to do this blog, and it shows: I regurgitate more than I would if I had the luxury of (paid) time. So I guess you could say that the June challenge showed me that I’m actually doing what I should be doing—only, maybe not so frequently. If I do something like this next year, it’ll be for one week, and tightly focused.

Still, I enjoyed the challenge, and I probably talked about things I wouldn’t have otherwise. These two are justification enough.