Quarterly Report

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     Back on January 1st, I resolved “to resume my daily writing and subsequent blogging in earnest.” Well, the first quarter has ended and, like a corporation, I feel compelled to file a report.

     First, I have written every day and posted 34 bloggy bits (I am the only one I know that refers to blog posts this way). I posted 14 times in January and 10 times each in February and March. These 34 posts in just three months surpasses the 8 posts in 2017, the 18 posts in 2016, and the 29 in 2014. If I keep up this pace, which is a big if, I could hit over 100 posts this year. That would be awesome. 
     Of the 34 posts, 5 of them had more than 500 views. While, that is not anything impressive in the world of a bloggers, it is pretty good for me.

• Diana Der Hovanessian (1934 – 2018) - 627
• MEME: Talking with Oya and Gilda - 572
• The Legacy Band  - 551
• Congratulations to Ara Topouzian - 537
  Ara will love this... but wonder why he is not #1
  
• Disneyland Birthday - 504

      Every time I posted a blog, I would tweet it, Google+ it, and post it on Facebook. While the individual posting views are an improvement for me, the overall blog views, called pageviews, are really impressive. Prior to January, my average pageviews per month were about 1,500. In January, there 4,934 pageviews, in February it was 6,474, and in March 5,796. A click on the general blog address is considered a pageview but does not count toward any particular posting. So, pageviews will always be higher than the sum of the views. It sounds kind of wonky but it is how Blogger (my blog host which is a Google product) tallies things. There are so many robots that these numbers are probably all inflated. Robots? Think automatic programs that lurk about social media gathering data for whatever purposes the Russians and others use that information for. Lately, with all the issues with Facebook (Facebook Analytica), the media is referring to them as trolls. Gee, I hope nothing I wrote influenced that last Presidential Election... or the next. So, I look at these numbers over time as relative indicators of interest. 
     I could have posted more in the past two weeks, but I hit a kind of slump. I did write everyday. I had some good topics and ideas. Yet, I was writing like I was slugging through mud. I wrote sentences which became paragraphs. I amassed several hundred words, but it seemed like everything needed some serious editing. Nothing passed quality control.
     While I fancy myself as a writer. I am most certainly an amateur. It is a hobby and something I love to do. Sometimes, I will read an article or short essay from a more well-known professional writer that makes the difference quite clear to me. I recently read a short piece by Chris Bohjalian, of The Sandcastle Girls fame, in which he shared how the idea for his latest novel The Flight Attendant. Writing like this humbles me, makes me admire Chris more, motivates me to buy and read his latest book, read it on an airplane, and then write a bloggy bit about it.