One year old!

This blog is one year old today. I started it, pretty much on the spur of the moment, February 27, 2010.

FYI, here's my first post.

I never intended to specialize in anything in particular, so I never expected to get many readers. (That last part was certainly accurate.) I find so many things interesting that I've never wanted to narrow myself (one of the big problems I had in college, and with a career, too).

So how has the past year gone?

When I started this blog, I worried about having enough topics. Heh, heh. As it turned out, that's the last thing I needed to worry about! I can't even come close to writing about everything that interests me. I write too many posts as it is (although the number will lessen once winter is over), without even denting the supply of potential topics.

However, I started out with a bigger variety of posts, I think. Politics and economics were always here, but they've kind of taken over the blog. I still write book reviews - science fiction, mostly - and occasional posts about computer games or science, but not as often as when I started (or does it just seem like that?). And for the most part, I think I've said all I can say about religion - not that that's ever stopped me before.

Other things have changed, as well. I've added a Quote of the Day in the main part of my blog (it used to be along the side, where no one ever noticed it). It's not exactly a quote, but more of an excerpt where I don't add my own commentary. Well, there's a lot of good stuff on the internet, and I want to share as much of it as I can. (This also helps me find these things again, if I need them.)

I've started posting political cartoons every day, too. Well, I've always liked such things, and I think they break up the long, long mass of text that's my usual writing style. Note that I try very hard to include a link to everything I copy from elsewhere. (Unfortunately, the above graphic is an exception. It seems to be everywhere online, and I just can't find where it came from originally.)

(A guy can hope, can't he? - Pearls Before Swine)

I certainly haven't accumulated many fans. With more posts, I get a lot more hits from Google now (especially when I write about Minecraft), but I have few more regular readers than when I started. OK, that's disappointing, but I really didn't expect much different (a little different, perhaps). If I really wanted to attract more people, I'd find a niche and stick to it.

But I'm just not interested in doing that. This blog is mainly for me. It gives me a place to express myself - to rant and rave, frankly - and if you find it interesting or informative, great. If not, that's OK, too. I'd still like to hear what you like and don't like about it. Everybody can use constructive criticism. But my goal isn't, and has never been, popularity.

Good thing, huh? Heh, heh. Well, I'm not sure I even have a goal, if you want to know the truth. I'd certainly like to attract more readers, but that's not why I'm doing this. Still, as I say, I'd appreciate comments and suggestions.

(Savage Chickens)

CRPG Addict, who has a young, but very successful, blog of his own, recommends that I change my title and header, since they don't really convey the focus of my blog. Well, I've known for a long time that my title was poor. "That's interesting" is such a common phrase online that a Google search results in millions of hits (hmm,... oddly enough, my blog seems to be near the top, no matter how I do the search).

But I'm terrible with titles, I really am. I gave almost no thought to "That's interesting," but I still haven't been able to think of a better one since then. I'm just not very creative, at least not in that way (maybe not in any way). Heck, just look at the titles of my individual blog posts.

And yes, the header is really vague, but the fact remains that it's accurate. I really don't intend to specialize here. If America ever gets its head out of its butt, I might well post less about politics. And I still intend to continue posting about other things - whatever catches my interest, whatever I feel like writing about, with absolutely no limitations.

I understand that other people don't have the same interests as I do. My brother gets bored to death with my posts about computer games (and probably most everything else, I suspect), but gamers won't find enough of them to keep coming back. When I write book reviews, I sometimes get flattering comments, too, but this isn't a site devoted to such things - or devoted to anything, in particular.

(Last Kiss)

It's just a mixture, a jumble - odds and ends of almost anything mixed into a heavy dose of politics. Looking at the tags, the "labels" on my posts, I'm a bit surprised to see just how many are about politics. Yes, I've got 100 tagged as "religion" and 68 "economics," but often they're about politics too. And I've only got 59 labeled "science," 40 "computer games," 33 "skepticism," 27 "science fiction" (I don't have a general "books" category).

Of course, many of these are videos (199) or cartoons (181), at least in part. But this gives me a very general idea of what topics I've covered. (When I started, I didn't really think about how I wanted to label posts. Instead, it's just... developed, without much thought. Yeah, I suspect that was another mistake. After all, it's not easy to find something using those labels, not at all. Of course, you can just search for a keyword, but then you get every post that even mentions the word.)

Well, I'll try to find the time to actually think about what I'm doing here. Heh, heh.  I think a great deal about the posts I write, but I tend not to think about the blog in general. Maybe that's been a mistake. But I've been happy with it so far, so it can't be too much of a mistake, I guess. As I stated in my first post, this blog was for me. And really, that's still how I think of it.