Saturday, November 7, 2009

Where Are All The Posts?

So, astute observers of both this blog and the calendar may have noticed that although National Blog Posting Month (affectionately known as NaBloPoMo) is underway, I have not been posting every day so far this week. I don't intend to do it for the rest of this month, or this year, either.

Why? I guess it just ran its course with me. When I first heard about it, as an offshoot of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, also in November), it seemed like a fun and doable project for me. And it was! I made all thirty days. I visited the NaBloPoMo website frequently. I joined every interest group I could find, and made two or three of my own. I met lots and lots of other bloggers who were supportive on those days when you just had nothing to say. It made me think differently about this blog and helped me break out of the "read a book and review it" format I'd developed. I started doing memes and thematic posts. It was a lot of fun, and I couldn't wait to do it again next year.

I started "training" for it in October, trying to blog more regularly in order to help get in the swing of things. I visited the NaBloPoMo page on the first day of the challenge, and regularly afterwards. But something was different. There's a sidebar that shows recent activity on the site. The first year I did this, the sidebar could barely keep up. You'd join a bunch of groups, make a bunch of comments, come back ten minutes later, and all of your stuff would have been bumped out of the siderbar. Last year, the sidebar barely seemed to move. The main page, with the "random featured blogposts of the day" quickly sprouted cobwebs. I'd ask for a writing prompt from a group, and no one would reply.

On one of the rare occasions where I actually managed a conversation with another site member, she said that she felt that extending NaBloPoMo year round changed the feel of things. Or maybe it was the economy, the election, the weather, or any other random external referent. Who knows. But without the community, it quickly became the equivalent of taking a vow to vaccuum the living room every day for a month. Just. Not. Fun. I wasn't excited about reaching the goal, I didn't typically get upset when I was struggling, it became kind of meaningless.

So this year, I made my own sort of challenge. I believe this is post #362 since I started this blog. My goal is to hit 400 by the end of 2009. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...