I’m so excited for the new year! I’m excited not only for the new number I get to write and glance at on my phone screen every day, but for the opportunities this year may bring, and the many, many projects I and others will begin.
I spent 2016 enduring your average hardships, improving upon old and gaining new skills, and consistently working on any bad habits I needed to sweep out of my life. This year, I’ll live a similar way, hoping that by the end, I grow closer and closer to the person I need to be in this universe.
I reached several blogging milestones of note at the end of 2016:
1) I can officially say I have been an Actual Blogger for a decade. From personal blogs, to academic blogs, to food blogs, to entertainment-focused blogs such as reviewing films and albums, I have lived a full life as a blogger.
2) I created and ran a fully functional, purposeful, topic-specific blog that garnered the most attention I’ve received in the last 7 or 8 years. I interacted with a follower-count I hadn’t seen in years; that is a huge achievement for me as a blogger.
3) On above blog, I also generated a decent amount of original content that I took the time to carefully craft and edit, including several tutorials (which was a goal of mine!).
4) For the first time ever, I managed to maintain a blog for 2 years without skipping a full month of blogging. While most of my blogs lived long, I certainly neglected them. Additionally, other than microblogging and reblogging aesthetic content, I never kept a blog of last year’s nature well updated with original content. It was a challenge, but well worth it.
All of this without a social media plan, without an editorial calendar (although I learned how to create one for some projects I am pursuing in 2017). It happened naturally, just because I enjoyed doing it. (:
Which leads me to today!
I set out to build up this blog on January 1st, but it’s now 20 past midnight into January 2nd. I busied myself throughout the day with necessary tasks (such as cleaning up the New Years mess), but I’ve also been trying to enjoy the break, so I sat down to watch LOTR with Matt. We still haven’t made it through all of them in one sitting, though.
My goals for this blog aren’t very specific yet, but they will grow and change as I continue doing it. I told myself that this year, I wouldn’t go without posting at least twice a month. Given my progress last year and the year before, I think I will be able to finally do this again.
I also have an inclination to bring back a lot of activities which have sort of changed in the last decade…those activities being pure video creation (more on that later), writing letters to friends, and generic personal+professional blogging. Since blogging itself has made such significant changes as an art form (or a science, or both) I found myself worrying about stats that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things in 2016. I have an interest in digital marketing, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not my priority, nor is it my pursued career field. I hope this year that I can write many letters to my friends and reconnect with them, that I can work on shorter projects to gain skills, rather than long-form ones it might be easier to set aside more often, and that I can recover my sense of wonder in certain areas of life.
I find that in my field of interest, the lack of the human element makes things harder, but it seems to be growing in technology. For me personally, the human element is the most essential piece of the puzzle.
Well, I’m excited to get back into blogging With A Purpose™. Do you have any New Years Resolutions you’re agonizing over not accomplishing this year? Anybody else starting a new blog for the new year?
Peace,
Tal
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