Apr 30, 2024 Tags: meta
Mini-post.
I started this blog in 2015. Since 2017, I have published (at least) one post a month, every month, on it. Maintaining a monthly cadence here has long been an informal goal of mine.
By years:
| Year | Post count |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 31 |
| 2018 | 27 |
| 2019 | 13 |
| 2020 | 20 |
| 2021 | 13 |
| 2022 | 14 |
| 2023 | 13 |
| 2024 (ongoing) | 4 |
Apart from a little COVID bump in 2020, the trend has been downwards towards a very steady cadence of exactly one a month, with the occasional “double feature” month.
Additionally, my posting patterns have trended towards later days in each month12:
| Year | Average day in month |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 15.58 |
| 2018 | 12.96 |
| 2019 | 17.23 |
| 2020 | 13.55 |
| 2021 | 15.15 |
| 2022 | 16.86 |
| 2023 | 19.08 |
| 2024 (ongoing) | 24.75 |
These two signals paint an interesting picture: while I’ve been able to maintain my cadence, I have regressed down to just meeting my cadence: one post a month, no more or less. Moreover, I’m clearly procrastinating on making my posts3, by writing them later in each month.
I created my blog to be a place to share the things I like4, not to be another source of routine obligation. So, in hopes of relieving some of that sense of obligation5, I’m explicitly shedding my promise of blogging at least once a month.
That’s the end of the post. I know I didn’t promise you a monthly cadence, dear reader, but explicitly dispelling my own personal commitment will hopefully bring you more posts (of greater interest and personal ~verve~) in the longer term.
I know that averaging days in months doesn’t make a ton of sense. But it conveys the general idea. ↩
ls _posts/ | grep -E "${YEAR}" | awk -F'-' '{ print $3 }' | jq -s add/length ↩
Like this one, which is also a cop-out post. ↩
And to keep my writing skills sharp, and to put words to things I think are important in my areas of interest, &c &c. ↩
Obligation is a big source of the drag here, but it’s not the only one. My work is also 100% open source now (hooray!), I’ve been presenting more, lifestyle changes, &c. I wouldn’t trade or exchange these things, so my hope is that shedding the feeling of obligation will be sufficient. ↩