My Race Is Run

Woohoo! We're there! 40 posts in 30 consecutive days. For those of you who weren't aware, I've been participating in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) during November. I stopped mentioning this a while back lest I jinx myself. Too easy to imagine saying how well it was all going, then total blogger's block sets in.

Looking back over the posts, it was an eventful month, so now it's time for a long, boring, retrospective post. These are my thoughts:

• When I look back, I am amazed at how much happened this month. It seems like a long time since those first posts. Posting frequently is like walking rather than driving; I see a lot more, and time moves slowly.
• In browsing the sites, I saw a lot of participants bothered by the forced act of posting each day diluting the value of their insights. I often wondered whether I was getting tedious and repetitive. My wife reassured me that there were a few unmemorable posts, but the quality was good overall.
• As mentioned before, I came across some participants' sites that had been closed off from public access. One of these left a message that she had found herself doing too much self-editing because of the influx of new and unfamiliar visitors. I did get a lot more traffic, and I definitely take a lot fewer risks when I am less sure about my audience.
• I kind of hated posting immediately after Crusher's tribute. That deserved a few days of attention.
• Ironically, I found I was writing much longer postings when working on a tighter schedule. I'm a fan of brevity, and it takes time to whittle things down and still get your point across.
• I never felt that I was at a total loss for subject matter-- in fact I still have a couple of topics in the can. Of course, this just shows the depths of my lunatic obsession with my dog.
• Once I had started, I was confident I'd finish. I'm pretty compulsive (for example... the movies).

Thanks to everybody for your visits and support. I notice some NaBloPoMo participants are talking about taking a vacation from blogging after this slog. I don't plan on a break, but going forward I'd have to say that I am going to take it a bit slower.