Where does the blog go? Some say, “I really like that piece” or “I don’t enjoy that post.” I’ve never thought my blog could be fairly represented in a given blog post or even a handful, but rather the body of work.
Somebody tells me that they like the music or hate the quiz; that’s fine, I shrug. I have zero capacity for writing to the audience, except when they Ask Roger Anything. I write what I need to write.
In Februarys in the recent past, I haven’t spent much time writing about Black History Month. But, oddly enough, even though I didn’t announce as such, I probably wrote more about the topic in 2025. It was, maybe subconsciously, a reaction to the reactionary anti-DEI nonsense.
In fact, I would just as soon never write about race or politics at all, a strange thing, I suppose, for a political science major. Unfortunately, politics define the allocation of precious resources. When the political leadership is… let’s say problematic… not saying something suggests my agreement with the status quo.
Process
I’d be in real trouble if I had to look at a blank screen without knowing what I was going for. This is why I tend to lean into events: my birthday, family birthdays, anniversaries, and major holidays. That’s about 20 posts each year.
I also tend to want to do a musical piece once a week. In 2025, I will write at least one post a month for the years ending in five in the 20th century. The R&B and country charts also started in the 1940s, and the adult contemporary chart in the ’60s. So that’s a total of 28 posts. Let’s add at least 4 Christmas music posts. I throw in a few Ask Roger Anything, plus linkage, and that’s another 28 posts. All I have to do is figure out what the other 285 will be: easy peasy, right?
I’m trying to figure out how to continue the blog. Certain posts I can write quicker than others, and I can free-associate on quizzes. The music pieces need links, and opinion pieces require links to verifiable sources.
One thing that occurred to me is that I will need to write shorter pieces and maybe even use some graphics, as The Post. This violates my self-imposed rule of at least 300 words, but I need more time to work on The Project.
I might want to make a few more deliberate attempts at having a repost of a couple of items each month or so. It’s not that I’ve never done a repost before. I reposted information about being in JEOPARDY and the derivation of the word lunaversary.
I always tackle Emmett Till quinquennially. The interesting thing about Emmett, whose death was 70 years ago this year, is that there’s always new information about the event or a greater understanding of how it played out.
I repeat myself when under stress.
There are a few pieces I want to, at least one in May, because when I first started blogging on the Blogger/blogspot platform, I didn’t know how to do pictures or graphics. Yeah, there was this software – I think it was called Picasa – and I followed the instructions, but could not get the images to work regularly. So a lot of my early posts don’t have graphics at all. I was also unaware of things such as SEO. I need page breaks and descriptors. The truth is that I don’t care much about that stuff, but it’s probably good blog hygiene, whatever that means.
Writing about the daughter has gotten a bit harder because I’m trying to figure out the line between telling an interesting story and her privacy. I desire not to embarrass her too much, but I have to bug her a little because it’s the joy of parenting. I had a lot of pictures of her early on, but I haven’t used a contemporary image of her for more than a decade.
What is The Project? Have you shared it with us and I missed it? I remember you mentioning it one time but I don’t remember ever reading what it is.
I have NOT talked about The Project by name. I will this summer.