My 2000th Post!

Yes, this particular blog entry marks my 2,000th! blog entry on "The Charbor Chronicles!"

It started about four years ago, with some blog entries that, admittedly, lacked a hell of a lot. The first one was a weak concert review for a Prince show. One of those earliest ones was a bitter rant against Michael Vick. Neither of those posts were particularly enjoyable to read, and nothing about them really made them stand out.

Things have changed, however. I am not saying that this is always a fascinating site that people want to spend a lot of their time in. But I will say this much: there has been improvement!

The main point of this blog from my end was to use it as an outlet to write quality post entries. Some people have blogs, and they write about things that could only possibly interest them, if even that much. I was determined to write about more substantive things than what I was having for dinner, or posting a selfie, or if I feel tired or bored or....well, whatever, you know?

So, I wanted to write about things that mattered. Things that interested me and, hopefully, things that others would find interesting, as well. And that is what I set out to do. Indeed, there are blog entries on news items, book reviews, movie reviews, concert reviews, music album reviews, sports predictions and reviews, and other stuff more generally. When I traveled to some places, I tried to take some halfway decent pictures, and to write about the places that I visited, including the history behind some of these places, and things of particular interest.

For the most part, I hope that I can honestly say that these blog entries have been of a solid quality. Despite being alone in doing this, and not getting paid for it (I am the sole writer and editor here), every effort has been made to produce something of quality. When I have not been certain that this can be done due to time constraints, or possibly other factors, I have essentially stayed away, rather than just writing something for the sake of writing it. That, in fact, has been the case these last few weeks, where my entries suddenly dried up in a hurry, largely because of the training my new position as a freelance journalist for the Guardian Liberty Voice.

Earlier this year, I wrote a review for a movie, Orania, which actually received attention from the director of the film himself! He even recommended my review on the movie's Facebook page! It was an award winning movie, so receiving serious consideration for an article written and published here stands out as one of the major accomplishments and, hopefully, is indicative of the quality that I at least aim for, although I likely do not always achieve it.

There are other articles that I am proud of, too. Some of the most popular have been about music, nor surprisingly. Specifically, people seemed to like the bands versus bands series that I did sometime last year. Particularly, the ones about Nirvana versus Pearl Jam, and Nirvana versus Guns 'n Roses, seem to receive a lot of attention. There have been a few other blog entries that seem to stand out, that people keep viewing. Although I am certainly pleased about this, sometimes it does catch me by surprise, the specific posts that people get interested in. They are rarely, if ever, the posts that I think might get the most attention, which is a bit strange.

Last year, I wrote a couple of blog entries from the events of one day - a day that I went with my brother to Bethel Woods to see Colin Hay, formerly of Men at Work. We stopped at the Red Apple Rest along the way, and I eventually wrote a blog entry about it. We stopped at SUNY Orange, where my grandfather used to work, and I wrote another blog entry. Yet another one came with my former hometown of Liberty, and still another one about the grounds of Woodstock. If you add those up, that means five blog entries from my experiences on that day alone, and they were surprisingly popular! My blog entry on Red Apple Rest in particular seemed to get a lot of attention, which means, presumably, that I am not the only one reminiscing about that once iconic restaurant.

In any case, I have written a lot over the years, and never has there been a year with as many posts published as this one.

Yet, I also mentioned that, starting in 2015, the focus will likely not be so much on the number of blog entries, as with the quality of them. I have already decided to drop the "On This Day in History" series, until I can work on them and mold them into something closer to what I had in mind in the first place.

Anyway, thank you for reading "The Charbor Chronicles", and I hope that we continue interacting in this way long into the future!