How'd I Do?

It is the end of November and so also the end of the posting sprint.  The month was 30 days, so there should have been 30 posts.  This makes 28.  In my defense I sort of missed the starting bell.  Things here in Pittsburgh were pretty tumultuous at the end of October and somehow I just missed the fact that it had become November.  If you deduct what I missed at the top of the month I think I only missed one day out of thirty.  So 28/30, or 28/29 if you get all litigious.  All things being equal I think 27 is swell.

Of course 27 posts includes at least four "Worth a Look" posts, which arguably shouldn't count full credit.  There were at least four "Ellipses..."  Those have been a staple post on this blog going way, way back.  Maybe those should count.  I remember a long time back trying to do a whole week of Ellipses... posts and that was almost as hard as doing more conventional posts.  There was at least one day where I just posted a picture, and then there was yesterday, where the whole post was a copy & paste of an email I'd received.

The photo thing seems legit.  I think I could up my normal posting tempo if one day/week became a weekly photo dump.  I shoot a fair number of photos in the day to day course of things: "Photo Friday" might have legs.  I'm also a real fan of the "Couple of Things" post format - like the one I used on Thanksgiving.  There's almost a format bubbling up here:

Monday: Ellipses
Thursday: A Couple of Things
Friday: Photo Friday
Sunday: Worth a Look

That's sustainable without ever actually writing anything.  There should probably be at least one day a week as an open day anyway - Saturday feels right in that tempo.  Although that leaves Tuesday and Wednesday as consecutive writing days.  That feels more demanding than it needs to be.

I'm going to need all that structure.  The actual writing part has become really difficult.  Going back and looking at the content of the site shows a whole lot of political posts and that has become difficult.  In these polarized times, and in a world where anything published online can go viral at the drop of a hat the downside of being outspoken online about politics just feels too extensive.  There's still plenty of my politics on Facebook, where there's a little control of the distribution.  One of the next biggest buckets was work.  For one reason or another I am way more aware of the chance that someone at work would be rubbed the wrong way by a post on this site.  I think there's still room for some work posting, but I have to say that much of what I am grappling with these days are differences in teaching now as compared with 15 years ago and that stuff has a real "get off of my lawn" dimension to it that might not make for the best posts.

I've never really posted much about family.  I don't know why I would start putting those things here.  And I've never really blogged about health issues.  If you make a list of possible things to talk about and scratch off all the posts rooted in politics, work, family, and health the list becomes really really short.  There are no Bad Ideas could rapidly become "David Blogs About the Weather."

We wouldn't want that.

As it turns out I had a fairly long list of topics to write about at the top of the month.  Curiously out of a list of maybe 20 I think I really only used maybe 4.  I was going to write about semester reviews, tech week, weight loss, Thanksgiving, green scenic fabrication, my work web publishing; there was a long list.  Just because the sprint is over doesn't mean I can't follow through on some of those.  Guess we'll see on Tuesday.