Stumbling to ten years

Do you know what today is?

Why, it’s the tenth anniversary of this blog.

Went by in a flash, didn’t it?

Since this blog commenced on January 3, 2009, I have published 2,093 posts, and have 34 others still sitting in drafts for good measure. (I could delete them, but I kind of like strolling down memory lane to see what I started before losing steam, or often, what I started and never published because I decided it was something I didn’t want to put out into the world.)

Another ten years? That looks pretty iffy.

I’d like to say I’m still going strong, but you probably know that’s not true. Oh, I still write the useful post now and again. But gone are the days when I used to have posts written three days ahead of time because of my practice of never posting more than once a day. Of course, my change in time zones back in 2013 – just a few months shy of the halfway point of those ten years – has now left some days from 2009 to 2013 looking like they had multiple posts. But they were posted on separate days when I wrote them, one of a couple personal blogging rules that I’ve never broken on this blog. (Two others: Never use the same poster art twice, never use the same title twice.)

The just completed year of 2018 was only the second in the blog’s history when I wrote fewer than 200 posts, and I wrote a lot fewer, only 171. That’s still 20 more than I wrote in the aforementioned year of 2013. But not only did I move countries that year, I was also without my computer from the end of August until the beginning of November as a local mom and pop computer shop was forever trying to acquire a new motherboard for me. I borrowed my wife’s Mac during that time, but perhaps inevitably did not write as much.

There’s no excuse for writing so little in 2018 except that I’m running out of time and ideas. I can’t find the time in my day to really research the type of in-depth post I used to write, leading to a lot of quick, superficial posts that have more to do with spotting cinematic coincidences than engaging with meaty ideas. I started this blog without any kids, and now I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old. It takes its toll. I suspect writing less has also diminished my creative juices overall, so I’m not constantly giving birth to new ideas for blog posts. It’s a vicious circle.

I’m not giving up. This is not my resignation post (though that would make quite a tidy end to my blog, wouldn’t it?). I still want to write a quality Audient and I still want you to come and read it.

But I do think I need to re-envision what I want to do with this blog, and ways to revitalize it, both for you and for me. I don’t know if that means more reviews, more lists, recurring features that have more to do with topics you’re interested in than the annual blog series I assign myself, or what. But I think it needs to happen or I won’t go one more year, let alone ten.

What I want to do with the blog has always been something I’ve struggled with. In the early days, I wanted to be active in a community of other bloggers I read regularly, even if it was just for the selfish reason of bringing more eyeballs and comments to my blog. Toward that I end I registered with L.A.M.B. (The Large Association of Movie Blogs), which introduced me to a number of other interesting reads on the subject of film. Almost none of which I check in on anymore. If I don’t have the proper time to cultivate my own blog, I hardly have sufficient time to read others’. That feels like a real shame, because they deserve my eyeballs, probably more than I deserve theirs.

I never really had the spirit of self-promotion required for a successful blog, and still don’t. For the majority of the history of the blog, I didn’t have my real name associated with it, and I still refer to myself as “Vance” to hearken back to those times. Without revealing my identity, I certainly wasn’t promoting my posts on social media. I do that a little bit now, but really only at this time of year, when I want to point people to my year-end posts (which is probably one of my driving forces behind continuing the blog). Part of that promotion was reciprocity with other bloggers, commenting on their posts so they’d comment on mine, and eventually building up a fan base by word of mouth.

But there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do the good work of attaining a presence online. And once you’ve attained it, you have to feed the beast. You have to keep the content interesting or you will quickly lose whatever heat you’ve built up. You also have to stay on top of your design, keep current with movie news, and as I said before, remain an attentive reader of the other blogs you care about. As it turned out, I’d rather use that time to watch a new movie, or rewatch a favorite, than to read about these things.

Blogging can be a lonely pursuit at times. You tend to measure your accomplishments by the number of comments you get. But really, many if not most blogs suffer in the comments department. One of my favorite bloggers out there, Nick Prigge of Cinema Romantico, does not get comments on most of his posts, even though they are brilliantly written and he deserves them. But not everyone who reads your work wants to actually comment on it, which is their right. Page visits can be a helpful benchmark of your reach when comments are not. Ultimately, you have to write blog posts for yourself, because if you’re seeking validation you aren’t usually going to get it.

I made peace with that a long time ago, and the occasional comments I do get are cherished. Even doing the blog for myself, however, has run out of some of its ability to self-sustain.

I think the short term goal will not be to worry too much about “keeping up appearances.” If I go two weeks without a post sometimes, so be it. If I’m doing this mostly for myself, I don’t need to worry about what others think of my blogging health and prosperity. If I write only when I’ve got something truly interesting to say, that will be better, as it will reward them when they do come and read, and they’ll come back. If I’m just pointing out coincidences in my viewing schedule, and only so I have something to write about during a given two-week period, well, maybe that’s not that useful.

I also vow – call it a New Year’s resolution – to find new ways of making The Audient more interesting. Again, I don’t expect a reader spike or comment spike as a result of any initiatives I put into place. But if I myself recognize that it’s not as interesting as it should be, then you probably do too. As with everything related to blogging, you have to make it interesting to yourself before it can be interesting to anyone else.

So I’m sorry if this seems like a bit of a bummer of a ten-year anniversary post. It’s just these are my honest thoughts on where I am at the moment.

I wanted to go out on a high note by drawing attention to one post I'm really happy with from each of the ten years, to bring the kind of retrospective quality a post like this should have. Truth is, it's the holidays, I've been out of town, and I just didn't have the time before my deadline arrived. Can't celebrate a January 3rd ten-year anniversary on January 10th, now can you?

But I did want to say that in the approximately one week since I first wrote a draft of this, I've posted almost every day and written actual posts that I would enjoy reading. So that's my high note. I love blogging, and I will continue to do so. I can't promise you ten more years, but I can promise I'm going to go forward with a new fire in my blogging loins.

Won't you join me?