Hello and Happy 2017!   Let’s start this year off by actually publishing a new post!  In 2016, I published a whopping sixteen posts for the entire year.  This is going to change in 2017.

A lot of bloggers start out the year with the same promise and it is very common to see bloggers of all sorts set out to publish a new post every day for the entire month.  There is even an online guide for topic suggestions to take you throughout the entire year, which you can find here.  Ironically enough, today’s writing prompt is travel related with “What’s the 11th item on your bucket list?”  I can actually find the answer to that in my drafts folder, where I have an unfinished post that contains my bucket list.  I had this really cool idea that I would publish it and as I visited the places on it, I could insert links to the posts I wrote about each place.  But I never got that far because lazy.

(In case you are interested, the 11th item on my bucket list is the world’s largest Beagle.)

Back in October, one of my favorite bloggers decided to publish every day for a month.  I thought maybe I would allow her to inspire me to maybe finish any of the drafted posts I have.  I ended up too lazy to complete even one post.  This time though, being a sloth was on my side.  Once the month was over, Lauren posted the results of her experiment, which you can read here.  I found the part about her falling stats very interesting.   Part of having a blog means that  you have to work out a schedule where people welcome hearing from you, without it being overload.  You also have to take into consideration how you alert people to new posts.  If people who registered for  your email list hate seeing your name every day, if Facebook is not going to let the people who like your page see your posts, because Facebook’s algorithm deems your similar posts as spammy, if Twitter moves too fast to catch your followers, then all your effort is not getting you a positive result.

This is kind of frustrating for me as I have to pace out my Las Vegas trip reports.  I personally hate reading other people’s reports in piecemeal.  I want to read it all now now now now now!  But I have to compromise for the sake of having my readers be alerted to new posts.

I also need to stop using social media as a habit.   There were so many times when I was in India where I would type up a new post for Facebook, because I am just so used to being on Facebook so often.  I would stop myself from posting, to save it for my blog.  Why am I posting these multi-paragraph musings on Facebook and not on my actual blog?   I don’t know.  Why have I not yet posted them on my blog?  I don’t know. For crissakes, I was in India during the demonetization, which was a huge deal.  Why is this not on my blog yet?  So many people were Googling for information on this event as it was current, and zero of them landed on my blog.  Because I never wrote about it on my blog.  WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

Going forward, I am setting a schedule.  I will start with my Las Vegas trip report, as I know that is what my readers are most looking forward to.  It also helps me greatly as I can write those out pretty quickly, which allows me the spare time I need to get out posts that need some research to complete.

I will be posting three times a week until the Vegas report is done, and then I will get started on cleaning out my drafts folder.  There are 39 posts in there, most of which are done and just need the photos inserted.  In addition to those, there are eleventy billion posts in my head that I need to get started on.  I also still have a million older Las Vegas trip reports that I would like to get up, even if in abbreviated versions.  The information may be out of date, but there are some comedic gems in there.  I often fantasize about building momentum and keeping it until I take off for my next big trip and then growing even further.  I mean, isn’t that what I am supposed to do?  I need far less fantasizing and way more doing.

So I will be back tomorrow with the start of  my annual Las Vegas Christmas trip.  See you soon!