300 Consecutive Days of Blog Posts in 2021

Today, October 27 is the 300th day of the year. Given that I have published at least one post every day this year, that makes for 300 consecutive days of blog posts. I thought that little accomplishment noteworthy enough to mention. Here is a heat map of what those 300 days look like:

In these 300 days, I have published 368 posts. At this rate, I should finish up 2021 with about 440 posts for the year. It is far from the most posts I’ve published in a year, but it is respectable, and if you combine total posts and average word count, it is the best I’ve done in a long time. While it isn’t always easy to think of a post idea and get at least one written each day, it is always fun, and that’s why I keep doing it.

This streak is still pretty far from the 825-day writing streak I had between 2013-2015. But one thing I learned from that streak is that the weight of the streak itself can be a problem. That is why I try to plan ahead here. I generally try to write my posts several days in advance of publishing them. I like to be two or three days ahead if I can. Ideally, I’d like to work up to a week’s buffer. I do work up a buffer if I know I am going to be away, just to take off the pressure. Because I enjoy the writing I do here, I still try to write every day, but the pressure is off if I can’t. Yet another lesson I took from Isaac Asimov, who was often several months ahead of his deadlines for his F&SF science essays.

I also wanted to mention that a few days ago, the blog surpasses the total number of page views and visitors that it received for all of last year. Since traffic peaked in 2015, it has decreased each year since, sometimes by a little, other times by a lot. In part that’s because I haven’t written as much in recent years, and evergreen posts only get you so far. But a few days ago, my numbers for this year surpassed last year, and in a few more days, they will surpass 2019 as well. Right now the blog is on track to have about 24% more traffic than last year. I like to think it is a combination of hard work (posting every day) and fun and interesting posts. More than likely though it is because I am posting new stuff every day, regardless of what it is. Still, since part of my goal was to revitalize the blog, seeing the numbers go up is particularly satisfying and I thank all of my readers for that.