I know I'm not blogging as much as I used to, but I was curious as to how much less blogging I'm doing. To that end, I calculated some figures and yes, it's depressing.
For instance, back in 2003:
Table: Number of posts per month—2003 Month #posts ------------------------------ Jan 2003 [1] 34 Feb 2003 [2] 33 Mar 2003 [3] 20 Apr 2003 [4] 24 May 2003 [5] 28 Jun 2003 [6] 30 Jul 2003 [7] 25 Aug 2003 [8] 21 Sep 2003 [9] 23 Oct 2003 [10] 24 Nov 2003 [11] 19 Dec 2003 [12] 39
It was a fairly steady output of posts back then. Let's compare that to now:
Table: A depressing number of posts per month—2018 Month #posts ------------------------------ Jan 2018 [13] 8 Feb 2018 [14] 8 Mar 2018 [15] 6 Apr 2018 [16] 2 May 2018 [17] 2 Jun 2018 [18] 1 Jul 2018 [19] 16 Aug 2018 [20] 11 Sep 2018 [21] 8 Oct 2018 [22] 21
Yeah, the best month of 2018 barly beats the worst month of 2003 (and that count for October includes this post). Looking over all the numbers, it appears that I seriously started slacking in 2010. The reason appears to be an uptick in work [23] when I was working with Smirk, and then getting a “real job” [24] a few months later (when I first encountered The Protocol Stack From Hell (rabid howler monkeys on crack indeed!) [25]). The anomaly was 2015:
Table: Not a bad number of posts per month—2015 Month #posts ------------------------------ Jan 2015 [26] 42 Feb 2015 [27] 37 Mar 2015 [28] 39 Apr 2015 [29] 36 May 2015 [30] 35 Jun 2015 [31] 38 Jul 2015 [32] 48 Aug 2015 [33] 39 Sep 2015 [34] 37 Oct 2015 [35] 41 Nov 2015 [36] 24 Dec 2015 [37] 23
I remember it feeling like work to post so much, but I like having written all those posts. Man, first world problems, right?
I think the aspect leading to this is MyFaceGoogleLinkedInSpaceBookPlus [38]. A long time ago I added a feature to automatically post links to my blog to Facebook just so I didn't have to log in and manually update it with the link. Of course, the other FaceGoogleLinkedMySpaceBookPlusIn sites made it difficult to automate that, so I still had to manually add links to them. And then Facebook changed to maintain the status quo with the other FaceGoogleLinkedMyBookPlusInSpace sites so now I'm stuck manually adding links to all the LinkedMyFaceGooglePlusInSpaceBook sites.
Granted, I brought this upon myself by wanting to add links to FaceGoogleLinkedMyPlusInSpaceBook, but it's still a point of friction when updating this site. I would love it if it were all automated, but alas, the LinkedMyFaceGooglePlusInSpaceBook's of the world want their walled gardens and XXXX the rest of the web. It is what it is.
I want to blog more. I do keep a backlog of entries I want to write, but getting the motivation to write is difficult.
Perhaps if I stop thinking about it, and Just Do It™ (do I now owe Nike [39] royalties?).