Two years in, and still trying to find my place.
It’s odd to celebrate an ‘anniversary’ (and only 2 years?) when one has been blogging more-or-less-continuously for six and a half years on a variety of platforms, and the blogging experiment was only the latest, most public permutation of a writing life. As experiments go, I’d have to say: I still need more data, and possibly a control group, to know if blogging is a worthwhile activity.
incidentally: I’m reminded how much the noun/verb ‘blog’ used to bother me. Now, (with the appropriate concrete derivational suffix) I’d be happy to take it on as my job title.
However, the end of June (29 June, in fact) is the anniversary date of this particular domain’s debut, so: Happy Birthday, Rocket Bomber!
[Actually, the first post dates to 26 May 2008 and imported archives predate that by another 18 months, but who’s counting?]
I didn’t bother with this last year, because honestly, I didn’t think about it. However, I’ve recently paid good money—in advance—for two more years of web hosting, so the idea of a minor celebration and some major reflection hit me the right way.
I’ve tried a lot of things over the past two years (some of them hold-over features from previous blogs) but nothing really stuck as regular weekly columns. It seems likely that so long as I hold a full-time job, I’ll never be able to post on-time or regularly. And that’s fine: as the bookstore job is a ripe vineyard, and many a post has been squeezed from those grapes, and I feel the ‘rethinking the box’ experiment is a vintage that will age well and will only get better over time. Some other attempted ‘tags’ and features haven’t done so well, but a blog is hard to do as a solo act and the exercise only gets harder if you attempt to compete with link bloggers and daily news sites.
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I’d like to present, for you edification and delectation, My Best Posts for the first 2 years on RocketBomber:
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/11/17/form-content-copies-rights-and-plato
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/01/10/5by8-29-the-blind-men-and-the-elephant-in-the-room
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/02/24/rethinking-the-box
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/06/04/rethinking-the-box-beating-the-big-box-five-case-studies
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/01/24/chart-estimated-market-share-2008
& of course, the Emma MMF
…and you might have your favourites but these five (minus the pie chart) are the ones I find myself referring back to and linking to most. [the pie chart, not so much, but that was a fun use of the database]
And My Eternal Shame — the three most popular posts:
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/06/01/rethinking-the-box-the-seven-types-of-customer
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/04/17/aside
http://www.rocketbomber.com/2009/04/09/rethinking-the-box-books-vs-comic-books
Looks like 2009 was a good year — and I have some more recent posts [4 to 10 June 2010 was a damn good week] that I also like quite a bit but it remains to be seen if they’re also as ‘classic’ as the ones above.
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How to celebrate? well, I’m thinking of taking time off of work, and spending it porting over all the remaining reviews (and select columns) leftover from Comicsnob.com, so all my output is in one place.
I’d like to restart the weekly Manga Online Sales Rankings, using a brand new scoring system and with a couple of new sources.
I’d like to resume weekly manga reviews, and start reviewing more anime.
I’d like to actually make good on a longstanding threat and start the RocketBomber podcast netcast.
And I’m beginning to look at redesigning the site from scratch. Starting with some original art. Which means I have to teach myself how to draw.
so. busy week.
