ONE YEAR OF BLOGGING !!!!!!!!!!

     It's kind of surreal to think about, but today marks the exact one year anniversary of me making this blog site. This blog sits in a sort of liminal temporal space in my mind: it feels like I've had the weekly pressures of posting to this site for almost forever, but at the same time it feels absurd to say that I've written 106 blog posts in the span of a year, with most trending above a thousand words each. Being conservative, that's at least 106,000 words written this year, which is more words than in the Hobbit book by  J.R.R. Tolkien. Man, you're telling me I could have written the Hobbit in a year instead of a bunch of blog posts that no one reads? What a waste of time...

    I'm joking, of course. Even though comparing my estimate of how much I've written for this blog to classic books in literature is kind of breaking my brain (seriously, this blog has more words than 1984), writing a bunch of words was never really the driving motivation behind my starting of this blog site. From the very beginning, the expressed purpose of this blog had been to exercise my writing consistency, by forcing myself to write something, no matter how trivial or sloppy, twice a week for a year. Did I always stay on schedule? Hell no! I'd be a terrible liar if I said everything went exactly as planned, and I never deviated from my deadlines. There were months where I'd fall a week or two behind, due to academic pressure from my college classes, or traveling to places where I didn't have time to write. But what I am proud of, despite my failure to stay on a perfect schedule, is my dedication to seeing this project through to the end. I didn't just throw in the towel the second I missed one week of blogging, I gritted my teeth, sat down at the Union, and wrote longer blogs to make up for my failures, and then writing make-up blog posts to ensure I still wrote my blogs for the week, just a little late.

    At the end of the day, I'm still very proud of what I've accomplished during my time working on this blog. I feel like I got way more out of this project than I could've ever foreseen. Even though the main purpose was to exercise my writing, I know appreciate this blog for a different reason: it serves as a sort of time capsule for this past year of my life. Now I can look back years later and remember certain events, or reread how I felt about certain movies or current events, or laugh at the stupid things I wrote about. In a way, I feel like I've been the most genuine I ever have been with myself when I write these posts. There's no censored or rewritten writing in these posts- most of these blogs were written in one sitting each. Using passion to fuel my quick bursts of writing has resulted in some very funny posts as many times as its resulted in some rather poignant pieces. For better or for worse, these blog posts illustrate who I truly am, without any sense of awkwardness or performative cynicism that I may use when speaking in person. I've discovered a greater sense of who I am through my writing, oftentimes on rereads of blog posts where I forget how brutally honest I am about my thoughts. To me, it is this aspect of the blogs that has proven most valuable to me.

    So, what now? Originally, I had planned for this to be a one-and-done project, similar to my many other one year projects. I believe my first year-long project was taking a selfie every day for a year (which was kind of a dud, since that happened during the COVID pandemic), then the one after that was tweeting a brief summary of each day on a private account (which was also kind of lame, since all I would do is list activities without any real reflection). My only other project following that was taking little videos to capture my final year in high school, which did turn out pretty good, but I never ended up doing anything with all of the footage- it just sits in a Google Photos album collecting dust. So what does this mean for this blog? Honestly, I don't really know. I've really enjoyed writing such honest and informal blog posts throughout these months, but I remember how overwhelmed I would feel the second I fell behind schedule, so I don't think I'd hold myself to such a strict standard moving forward. Still, it would kind of suck for this to join the collection of other projects, collecting dust and being slowly forgotten with time. So, I'm going to set myself a new, more lax schedule- just one blog post per month. If I feel like writing more, then great! But I won't stress myself out with this blog anymore... I have plenty of other things in my life that can provide a source of stress.

    Even though this isn't "the end" for this blog, I still can't help but feel some sort of wistfulness for the end of this "phase" of this project. I will always remember this past year kindly, and not just for the wonderful exercise this blog provided me with, but for all of the friends, the memories, and the lessons I've learned this year. Immortalizing this period in my life through this blog was a fantastic idea, and I can't wait to keep this going! 

Lastly, for the few people who actually do read these blog posts, I can't thank you enough. I know there are very few of you, but you have no idea how much it means to me to hear from some of you guys when you read a post and have something to say about it to me, Truly, I am beyond blessed to have such supportive, funny, and caring people around me. I hope I can provide all of you with a similar light in your lives, because I am truly grateful to have such a beautiful sky of stars shine down upon me every night.