Thursday, November 28, 2013

1,000th Post Published for "The Charbor Chronicles"!



I have come to really like the new look for this blog page, with the brown color and the nap on top (which may not be clear with this particular picture). It's more me than the previous one, I think. 




The picture may not be too clear, either. But it shows the most visited individual blogs of mine, with three of them having been visited over 1,000 times!



It hardly feels like a long time ago that I was on here, celebrating my 500th published post on "The Charbor Chronicles".

Yet, here I am now, celebrating my 1,000th post, and on the same calendar year! This has clearly been, far and away, the most active year ever for "The Charbor Chronicles".

Not that it has been around terribly long. After all, it only first came into fruition late in 2010, after a suggestion by my girlfriend at the time. I even remember that first, rather embarrassing blog entry. I did not know what to write about, but I wanted to write something. When we went to a Prince concert, it provided me with an apparent opportunity. But it also showed my limitations at the time. I was not actually familiar enough with Prince that I would know all, or perhaps even most, of the songs that he performed on that night by name. That was severely debilitating to the review, which wound up being weak and very watered down. Again, it remains a relative source of embarrassment to me even today as far as "The Charbor Chronicles" is concerned, although I have resisted the temptation to revisit or edit it, much less delete it.

Also, "The Charbor Chronicles" got bogged down with a sluggish start. I did not know what to write, although perhaps at the time, that was more a case of feeling intimidated by the prospect of actually putting something out there that the general public, if they wished, could easily access. How could I regularly produce something of interest, with a decent quality of writing.

Eventually, though, I began to get past those reservations. my nervousness about writing relative crap - the blog equivalent of, say, people posting pictures on Facebook of what they are having for dinner - began to dissipate.

In truth, there is no shortage of things to write about! It took me a long while to fully realize that. But once I did, my activity here increased dramatically. Why, I could write reviews of books that I read, of music albums from groups that I enjoy, or of concerts that I attended. I can write about sports. And, of course, politics is a fairly common subject matter now for me here, as well.

Prior to this, my writing had mostly been focused on fiction. There are three major works (I refer to them as projects) that I am now currently working on. If you are familiar with my writing, then you know already that I can tend to be a bit wordy. So, it should not come as a surprise that the first of those projects, which I have been outright working on since 2003 (ten years now!) is well over one thousand pages. The second probably has several hundred, while the third, which is newer, probably maybe around one hundred and change.

My weak point is editing. That discipline has not been my friend - at least not yet. Part of it is that I find it distasteful, usually, to read my own stuff. Whenever I do (and this is true for blog entries as well), I always, always feel like editing). There are few pieces of my writing that are generally satisfactory enough for me to simply leave them alone.

That can be problematic when you try, as I am trying here with "The Charbor Chronicles", to publish something substantive on a regular, everyday basis.

Yet, I have managed to reach the 1,000th post. Not all of them were great. Some of them (not too many, but a few) were simply links to news articles or other pieces of interest). A few others, admittedly, were probably rushed and/or generally poorly written, even uninteresting. But for the most part, I will take the liberty of assuming some measure of pride in my own work, and say that most of the blogs are of relatively decent quality. When I make arguments, I try to incorporate everything, and it is a problem for me to let go without adding everything. Case in point - some of the recent entries on the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. There simply was too much stuff to include everything, and it would have taken me many, many more days, even weeks or months, in order to accurately include everything and look at the evidence from every angle. And that would likely have been at the exclusion of other material. So, I published what I had, trying to make sure that it was of decent quality.

This blog site may not be perfect, but given that it is a one-man operation, and that I am not getting paid or anything for this, but doing it on my own time and with my own energy and resources, I think it is pretty good. There is a feeling I get sometimes that it is an accomplishment that most other people cannot claim. Also, since it is writing, it serves as an outlet for my creativity.

Of course, not everything on this blog site is unique to me. In particular, the daily "On This Day in History" series that I try to publish everyday is obviously taken from other sites, which are listed on those pages for further exploration, if the reader desires it. But these are interesting, and have generated some of the most consistent interest of any of the blogs, even though I cannot claim credit for it.

Some of the other blogs that have gained notice are surprising, although most focus on a particular field of interest that might attract a particular audience. Case in point, there was a blog entry on electronic cigarettes that I did earlier this year which received a lot of attention. It is one of my most viewed entries, and no other blog entry has generated as many comments and, yes, even compliments, as that one did. Album and book reviews seem to be fairly popular, in most cases. Also, not surprisingly, perhaps, my reviews of events that I have attended also tend to generate some interest - particularly concerts. People who follow a particular artist, and particularly perhaps those who attended events, are understandably interested in reviews of those events. Particularly if pictures are included!

Sometimes, though, I have been surprised by the level of interest. The second most reviewed blog entry was on the album review for Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. I was also quite surprised by the level of interest in a review of last year's Broncos-Ravens playoff game. Having written regular reviews each week, particularly with individual games in the playoffs, I expected some people to view that page. But the level of interest, the sheer numbers of visits, was staggering. It was the first time that I had gotten over 200 people to view any single blog entry at the time, and it happened all at once. I wrote and published it, and the next time I logged in, my eyes popped out a bit when I saw how many visits that one had received. But, in fairness, I can hardly take the credit for that, because that was such an incredible and intense playoff game, with a very dramatic finish. An instant classic. I simply capitalized on the success and attention that that particular game garnered in writing about it.

Many of the ideas that I had seemed pretty good at the time that I hatched them. Sometimes, they did not quite turn out as well as I had hoped. Other times, they were far more overwhelming than expected, and took much more time. In a few cases, some ideas have proven far more complicated and involved, and so they have not yet been published.

I will get to those, in time. But for now, I am happy to report, "The Charbor Chronicles" is still going strong, with 1,000 posts, and counting! That, and "The Charbor Chronicles" as a whole is rapidly approaching 50,000 visits! Those are numbers that, failing any real advertisement or mass exposure, make me feel like I am doing something worthwhile!

Oh, and by the way, thank you very, very much for reading! And as always, any and all questions, comments, or concerns are welcome! I will look to answer each individually, even if it is simply an acknowledgement of whatever you are writing about.

I am looking forward to continuing to remain active on the site, and look forward to another 1,000 blog entries!

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