Reflecting on 1000+ blog posts

These are the current numbers for my blog. (Well, at the time I first started drafting this. I expect it will be several days before it's posted and then they will be different.)

These are the numbers I care about.

The one most other people care about is 2,375,403. That's the number of views the articles have had.

But this isn't a post about statistics. This is a post about motivation and reward.

 

I started writing this blog for me.

That other people have read it and got something from it is a bonus.

If I were writing for other people, I would write about different topics, I would care about SEO and promotion, and I would have given up writing sooner.

I get lots of views each day on posts that I can't explain.

I know that most views of this blog come from "the long tail," and Google points people here because there is a lot of content. The fact that I've been posting for 17+ years also gives me a level of SEO credibility.

There have been periods where I have written very little. This is fine by me. By not forcing myself to publish on a particular schedule, the frequency of posting doesn't hold me back or force me to publish something for the sake of it.

I publish when and if I want to.,

Some people need and/or benefit from forcing themselves to publish on a regular schedule. If that works for you, great. If it doesn't, that's okay, too.

Others might think a multi-month gap in posting is bad, but if that's what I want or need, it's okay. Over a long enough period, the gaps are lost in the overall volume of posts.

I'm only interested in writing things that don't already exist anywhere else. This probably holds me back from getting more views than if that were my goal, but it probably helps me show up in the long tail of niche searches.

And yet, some people still regularly show up and read everything I write. Thank you. I'm glad you find it interesting.

Will I keep writing here? I can't say for certain but I have no plans on stopping.

I'm only publishing this post because I thought I might find it useful to reflect on all that I've written, and 1000 posts felt like a milestone worth noting, even if not fully celebrating. Originally, I thought I'd want to write lots about this, but upon starting it feels a bit too "meta" and self-reflective. I don't know what the benefit is of looking at the numbers. What I find beneficial is doing the thinking to get my ideas in order such that they make sense when written down. That's, primarily, why I write. :)