Blog: The Two-Year Mark

TORONTO, ONTARIO - According to the calendar, today marks the two-year anniversary of this blog. In the Internet era, that's not saying much--the earliest blogs started almost a decade before this one, and any blog that is regularly updated for more than about three months tends to last for years.

Along more than 850 posts so far, this blog has clearly changed in focus. Originally intended to try to point out some aspects not receiving much attention in the political races in Canada and the United States in the fall of 2008, political posts are quite rare now. That's mostly because the tone of this blog was intended to be largely non-partisan (though I doubt any regular reader had any doubts who I would vote for long before the elections arrived). Nobody wants to hear that. Reasoned analysis is not considered to be of value, only partisan point-making. There's no interest in centrism.

The bulk of the posts now are of the glorified diary variety. Photo blogs of events that I've attended or places that I have visited dominate other attempts at commentary on the state of the world. Still, a perusal of any given week of posts shows a variety of topics, often including media, heritage, transportation and societal trends.

Because successful blogs stick to a single topic that has a target audience that returns regularly, this blog was not expected to be wildly successful, as I had no interest in a single-topic blog. Still, I expected that more comments would be posted to the blog to argue with points raised. Those have been few and far between. Frankly, there's been more deleted spam than challenging comments.

Near as I can tell, the bulk of the regular audience are friends and family checking in on what I have been doing. As a result it seems like the future of this blog might well be limited to the diary-type entries to save time in e-mail and phone communications with friends and family.

Certainly, the idea that this blog might directly or indirectly lead to employment has proven to be a pipe dream. I've been explicitly told that I have no blogging skills by two potential blogs I expressed interest in contributing to, and I can't say I've met anyone as a result of this blog, much less a potential employer.

I rather like the idea of reaching one thousand posts, though, so shortly of having nothing of consequence on my mind, the near-daily posts will likely continue in the present format until that milestone is reached.