Two Hundred and Counting...

I've been pondering a worthy post for my two-hundredth blog. The Stream of Consciousness was started back in 2009 - at least on Blogger. An earlier iteration was born on Live Journal and I still have a couple of friends that blog over there, but Blogger offered me a little more of what I needed creatively so I made the move in 2009. Lately, I've been thinking about a move to WordPress - I have several author friends who blog there - but an irrational fear of moving has kept me at Blogger for the time being. The future is yet to be written...

What does 200 blog posts mean? Does it simply infer that I have a lot of time on my hands? I would contest that; looking back over the years, there are weeks and months where no blogging at all took place. In fact, these idle periods tend to skew the curve of my blogging activity (and creativity). Let's get the boring, self-aggrandizing statistics out of the way, shall we?

Prior to writing this blog, I had received 31,481 lifetime page views on Blogger. Let's break that down:

Writing production: i.e. number of blogs written per year...
- 2009: 27
- 2010: 50
- 2011: 25
- 2012: 57
- 2013 (year-to-date): 40 (not counting this post)

Reading/Page views:
- Page views per month: 562 (56 months)
- Page views per week: 130 (243 weeks)
- Page views per day: 19 (1,697 days)

Now, as I mentioned, were I to factor out all the months/weeks/days that I didn't blog at all, my adjusted page view statistics would be much higher. However, I am neither a math geek nor a raving narcissist so we'll go with the raw data and move on.

More interestingly, I thought it might be a reasonable idea to take a look at some actual blogs based on certain milestones and reflect on their meaning, etc. (or just laugh embarrassingly and hope you don't click through to actually read them).

Naturally, one significant milestone would be the first blog I posted on Blogger:

- January 8, 2009 - Greetings to the Big G: Nothing spectacular here; no pictures, no professions of undying fealty to Blogger. In fact, reading through this short post shows that I was vacillating on moving from Live Journal at all - I sense a behavioral pattern here. On the plus side, I managed to fit in a plug for Seabird, an excellent fantasy adventure that you should read if you haven't already!

- December 30, 2009 - The Music is in My Head: A recurring theme throughout the blogging years has been music. This was my last post of 2009, and reading back through it I can honestly say, "This still applies today."

For proof, I'll just note that I've listened to all the songs mentioned in this post during the last month (August, 2013). Quality never goes out of style. Enjoy!

Guys are spinning girls like forty-fives...

That was the beginning and the end of my first year on Blogger. Let's go to the Hall of Fame now and take a look at the top posts of all time - TPAT. In the interest of time (and your sanity) I'll confine my trip down memory lane to the top three blog posts - by page views - published on The Stream.

- January 7, 2010 - I Dislike Equivalent Temperatures: I'm not a science geek, but sometimes I will explore more technical subjects in my blog. Coming in at number three, I have no idea why this particular post has received so much play. It's probably because I included Jim Cantore as one of my labels. As a writer, I am definitely not above a little SEO (search engine optimization) in a lame attempt to drive traffic to my blog. If you're inclined, you can enjoy my humorous rant against using the heat index instead of the actual temperature.

- December 6, 2011 - Space...the Final Frontier (that we'll never get to?): Interesting! My second most-read blog of all time is also scientific! Hmmm...maybe I need to leave all this musical, creative and philosophical stuff behind? Okay, you busted me - I was making fun of science again. Don't get me wrong, I think the idea of an Earth-like planet in the universe is awesome. I just don't think finding one that is 7 million years away - in our best current travel modes - is all that exciting. That's kind of like me looking in the window of the Ferrari dealership: it's really beautiful in there but there's no way on Earth I'm ever going to afford one.

Please sir, may I have another?

- February 10, 2012 - Literary Review - The Scroll: I'm not a voracious reader; I just don't have the time anymore. As a young man I used to plough through novels like a farmer at planting time. I still read but, by dint of my limited opportunities, try to be a little more discerning regarding my content. The blog post with the most page views ever was my review of a novel entitled The Scroll. Written by Grant R. Jeffrey and Alton L. Gansky, The Scroll is an excellent read and I highly recommend it. I won't re-review it here - if you want to read what I had to say about it, click the link above and you can enjoy my full review.

There you have it, the top three blogs I've posted on Blogger - ranked by number of page views.

What does the future hold? Yoda says it best in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, "Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

I will keep writing this blog and, hopefully, people will keep reading it; either by accident or on purpose. One topic I would like to spend more time blogging about is the progress of my New Kingdoms novel series. If I could have one wish for the future, it would be that a lack of blog production would be a result of available time being spent writing my novels, as opposed to not writing at all as a consequence of work and other responsibilities.

See you at the next milestone...

X