My blog was born on March 12, 2008 at 7:46pm. This means it just turned three. Three years is a long time in internet years. My readership has grown steadily over those years. I do not use extensive blog analytics, so my readers remain relatively anonymous unless they choose to comment on a post or contact me directly about a post. This creates an interesting dynamic. A very small number of visitors leave comments (I do not have thorough stats on unique visitors, but it’s definitely well under 1% of visitors that comment). So I really do not know my readers well.
In honor of the third birthday of my blog I’m going to post a few of the questions I get asked about blogging, along with my responses (I’ll add these to my FAQs page too).
Why do you blog? I blog because it amuses me. It also helps me stay in touch with people I do not see often. Blogging gives me an outlet to write in a non-scientific manner, with a degree of recklessness regarding grammar. I’ve found that blogging motivates me to ask questions and experience things too, which is a perk.
How do you come up with ideas? Most of my posts are born as I go about my day. Some posts are just accounts of experiences or observations. Others are questions or thoughts that happened to germinate in my mind. I keep lists of potential post ideas, many of these are topics that would take research or extra work to write, so I save them until I have time. Insomnia is also a good source of inspiration; some ideas are nocturnal.
How long does it take to write a post? I’ll often begin to formulate a post in my mind well before starting to type it out. The actual writing and formating can take anywhere from ten minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the post. After writing a post I try to wait a bit, then proofread it before publishing it. Some posts take a long time to write. I have a Baseball Apologetics post that I’ve been working on for months (it’s getting too long to be a simple post).
I’ve met you in real life and you didn’t seem anything like the person who writes this blog. Why? In many real life settings I am parsimonious with words. My blog is a small world constructed primarily out of words. Thus the conflict. I think my blogging persona and real life persona are congruent. If I wanted to build a different blogging persona I would write an anonymous blog (or maybe I already do).
How long do you intend to keep blogging? I have no idea. As long as I have time for it and I enjoy it I’ll continue.
