100,000 Hits

This blog is about to pass the 100,000 view mark. Sounds nice, but considering I've been blogging for over nine years, that isn't much. Some blogs have thousands - tens of thousands - hundreds of thousands of views PER DAY. While views may have increased over the past few years and months, I have a long way to go. Of course, that's not why I blog. 

3126 posts = 32 hits per post

11000 hits per year

900 per month

30 per day

In an effort to have new content every day I've started limiting posts to one per day. For the past few months I have done well with this - I'm currently on a record consecutive days streak. Saturday afternoon I did post a second post (my GT/UGA game notes) in an effort to share hot off the press info on Facebook. Since it was my 30th post of the month I did not post on Sunday, but I still consider my streak intact. Lately I've also done a better job adding photographs to the blog. Pictures I take of my various adventures are great, though most of the pictures are swiped off the internet. When possible I'll find a Sports Illustrated cover of the subject.  

The top ten most read posts:

9745 Nike Roshe Run running shoes

1344 Braves Uniform History

1234 NFL Throwback Uniforms

949 Rounding Third (about another blog)

889 Anna Watching the YOLOers (kinda creepy)

763 Puma Elite (more shoes)

683 Fair Catch Kick (inadvertently published the same night the 49ers tried the rarest play in football)

531 Total QB Ratings for November 18, 2013

500 Eight Days the Week (typical post with a catchy title)

470 Nike Air Relentless (more shoes)

Perhaps I will post more blog posts to Facebook, but I'll pick and choose the highest quality posts for than honor. I'll be the first to admit that many of my blog posts are hastily thrown together, are not properly structured, and not completely thought through. Lists are considered poor journalism, though I like to make lists to make comparisons (and other reasons). Might as well post them. I need to reach 200,000 hits in five years or less. I could increase hits by placing every post on Facebook, but I don't want to do that. I'd rather others not do that either (I'd rather people not post my picture on Facebook either, but that's another subject).

As the kids grow there are fewer family activities to write about, so more and more of my posts are about baseball and football. The internet is already saturated with overzealous sports blogs - most long on sensationalism and negativity. Many do provide much deeper analysis than I could ever hope to offer. I have my likes (Justin Thomas, Zack Laskey, Evan Gattis) and dislikes (Synjin Days and BJ Upton), but I'd like to think I'm more positive than negative. I won't be calling for the coach to be fired after every loss.

The various pages add to the total hits:

5000 Shoes

700 UGA

550 Timeline

500 Braves Roster History 

I purposely do not write about everything that happens in our family - I post far too much personal information as it is. Perhaps next year I will try to write more about the world around me. More about my threadbare walk with Jesus. The current threat of radical Islam greatly troubles me. How Christianity's influence in America is declining. I'm starting to think about our country's racial divide, though I'm much too ignorant on the subject to offer an opinion. I'd like to think this writing helps me form an opinion, however trite that may be. I do need to post more pictures of Anna's, Ceil's, and Matthew's artwork.

Every now and then I'll have a friend start off a new blog - often in January. The first few posts are great, with insight much deeper than my usual wallowing. But soon the aspiring writers quit posting. It is understandable - putting heart and soul onto pen and paper every few days is hard work, especially with a full time job, family, and other obligations. Most days I hardly have time to proofread. Kitti shoots for one blog post per week. I may have a lower writing/depth standard, but hopefully with all the practice comes higher quality. The whole Malcom Gladwell/Outliers thing.        

This blog will soon celebrate its ten year anniversary. Where do I go from here? Like running the Peachtree Road Race for 28 straight years, it seems like I should keep on blogging for the time being. At some point I'll need to update the look of the blog. The current pictures are at least five years old. Right now I am happy with them, but I really should change them soon.