October 13, 2011:  Reckoning

It's been just over a year since It's All Academic was published, this website was launched, and I started blogging (semi-regularly).  Now that a year has passed, I have had to make decisions about sinking more money into the domain name and the website.  For now, I have decided to do that.  But, it's encouraged me to look back at the year's worth of blogs and try to see interesting trends.

68 blogs have been posted since October 7, 2010.  That sounds like a lot, and averages out to about one every 5 1/2 days.  It doesn't feel that way, though.  It feels like I have slacked off, although honestly the 10 days between October 3 and today is the longest stretch I have gone, not counting most of the month of November 2010 when I willingly stopped blogging.

So, 68 blogs! That's a lot of slogging.

I'm surprised, in retrospect, that popular music  hasn't been woven through more of these.  I suppose in my younger days, I might have stopped to reflect upon the ending of REM's career.  Would there have been much more to say, though, then that REM should have stopped to reflect upon the ending of their career in their younger days (although Accelerate did rev up my heart; I always have had a soft spot for the sloppy REM of Monster and Accelerate)?

Of additional surprise is that I didn't reference crime/mystery fiction more (outside of my ruminations of one more Columbo, a particularly rewarding blog to write).  The infusion of Peter Robinson references into It's All Academic was a nod to my fascination with great mystery writers.  I am a sucker for a good book where the detective is chasing a serial killer, sometimes even for bad ones.  How come I never once saw the opportunity to have an executive vice-president/slash serial killer populate a blog about the hazards of campus life?

My dog, now two dogs, make almost no appearances.  Sylvester is at my feet now, wondering I'm sure when I will turn out the light and head upstairs.  Such loyalty and faithfulness is one of life's great joys.  Maybe I just couldn't find enough humor about dogs. (In all honestly, the dogs did populate some poetry over the last year. Given how few poems I've posted, that's speaking pretty well for mutts all over the world.)

So, I suspect I will give this website and blog one more year.  If topics continue to seem difficult to come by, if general interest still seems limited, after that it may be time to move on from this fun venture.  I have now started a blog for Southwestern Michigan College that can be equally ignored as this!  On that one, I can always use fear and intimidation to get people to read and respond!