}

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Seasonal rush

Many people rush around a lot this time of year, trying to finish projects before the holidays or the end of the year, for example. Some people get very stressed with gift shopping or other holiday-related tasks. As a blogger, I have one more task to achieve.

This year hasn’t been a banner year for blogging. I have a personal goal of an annual average of one post per day, and while some years that’s been easy, this year, for many reasons, it hasn’t. In seven months, I posted less than once per day, I met the goal in two months, and exceeded the goal in two. I don’t yet know how this month will turn out.

December is my catch-up month, and has been most years: It’s the month in which I post a lot more to try and meet my average. In 2014, I published 68 posts, 42 in 2013, 37 in 2012, and so on. In fact, the only year I had fewer December posts than there were days was 2007, which was a productive year.

So, with this post, I still need 35 posts to meet my annual goal, which, at the moment, is an average of 2.5 posts per day. That’s certainly not an unachievable number, but I’d like to reduce that to mere two posts a day, so between now and Monday, I hope to have at least a couple days with many posts—and, therein lies a problem.

I can’t publish simply anything—I have to say something about whatever I post, even a YouTube video (but not counting simple announcements of podcast episodes, of course). Already some things I thought would be quick and easy posts ended up being longer and taking far more time than I thought. I guess that figures: I’m a blogger, not a cataloguer or amalgamator of other people’s stuff (though I do a little of both).

So, we're in the final countdown to 2016, and in the midst of the rush for all the reasons that go with that. I just get to add one more.

2 comments:

rogerogreen said...

What a cheat! I admire it.

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

Well, if I could write ahead, like some people I know, this end-of-year push wouldn't be necessary. On the other hand, December and January are the two months I have the most time to blog, so I suppose it makes sense that I capitalise on that.