As is somewhat typical for bloggers, I wanted to consider my past year of blogging today and look forward to my blogging goals and vision for the future.

Since I started this blog in 2004, I’ve been a sporadic blogger at best.  I would have periods of time where I would post regularly — and even multiple times a day, only to be followed by long periods — occasionally measured in months — of total silence.  Given the personal things that were going on in my life at the beginning of this year, the year began with one of those extended periods of silence.  I eventually got back to blogging sporadically, though.

In October, something happened that inspired me to make some changes here.  Former Conservative offered me the opportunity to serve him as a guest-blogger over at his place while he went away.  That opportunity rekindled my love of blogging.  As I began to get feedback over there and enjoyed the attention, I began to realize what got me started blogging and what I had almost forgotten about — readers.

I’ll admit that because guest-blogging allowed me to see FC’s site statistics, I found myself a bit envious.  Because of FC’s focused and disciplined blogging schedule, he had managed to garner a consistent following that blew me away.  This rediscovered joy of feedback and envy pushed me to make some changes, primarily developing a regular schedule.  Since then, I’ve made a commitment to putting up a blog post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.[1]  Since implementing this policy, I’ve only failed to keep this schedule for one day (December 26), and I’m already seeing positive results, as the graphs I’ve included with this post shows.

This year, I’ve also added book reviews and book analyses to my blogging activities.  I’ve also sought to standardize the days that I write about the books I’m looking at more closely.  At this point, I intend to keep Mondays as a day to blog about “Raised Right” until I am finished with that book.  Fridays will similarly be dedicated to working through “The Visitation.”

I’m also looking at the topics I blog about.  One of the things that I will admit is that I don’t think I”ll ever be focused enough to be a “single topic” blogger.  My interests tend to be rather eclectic and my blog will continue to reflect that.  I enjoy being able to discuss religious issues, issues important to QUILTBAG[2] people, and my recent foray’s into feminist thought and issues important to women. I’m also hoping to continue writing personal posts and even exploring more about the topic of codependency in general and my own struggles with and recovery from it in particular.

I will also be re-evaluating my blog schedule at some point.  I’ve already been thinking that I’d really like to blog every day.  After all, that would give me two more posts a week to cover the wide variety of topics I want to talk about.  However, I’ve decided to get at least another month or two under my belt with the current schedule.  Five posts a week right now is pretty comfortable to me right now, at least most weeks.  However, there have been a couple times that I struggled to meet that schedule.  Also, given some of the topics I want to blog about, I think the time and energy I need to invest in some posts is going to increase.  So it’s in my best interests to maintain my current schedule for now.

Any and all readers are invited to leave a comment offering their thoughts and suggestions.  If you have an opinion on my blogging schedule or my content (what you currently like, what you’d like to see (more of), etc.), please let me know.  You’re welcome to offer such feedback any time you feel like it, but here’s a clear chance to do so.

Happy New Year.  May 2012 be bright and blogworthy.

Notes:
[1]  I took this a step further and set a specific time to put posts up each day (9am Eastern on Saturday and 12pm Eastern the rest of the days).  Over the holidays, I’ve had a few late posts, but I do try to keep to this as well.

[2]  One of the things that I want to start exploring in my personal time is trans* issues.  This is both due to the fact that I’m finding myself wanting to gain a better understanding of those issues and a desire to quit being one of those gay male bloggers who claims to blog about LBGT issues and yet only ever seems to talk about gay male sexuality and issues related to gay men.

Having said that, I also note that I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to trans* issues.  As such, any upcoming posts are likely to be of the “here’s something interesting I’ve just learned and I’m trying to understand it better” rather than offering anything that should be considered even remotely authoritative on the topic.