My First Blog News Post in Some Time

When looking at the page on my blog for “Relevant Blog News” it dawned on me that I had not written a post dedicated solely to blog news since February 2020. Goodness me! It just goes to show how much time flies, especially during a global pandemic.

Like with many other aspects of life, the pandemic resulted in a change of course for how I did things with my blog. Instead of a mix of republishing some old blog posts, blog news, announcing blog awards I received, sharing others’ blog posts, and giving some blog advice on select Thursday evenings, I instead dedicated myself to the weekly COVID updates every Thursday evening when the pandemic was bad in New York City (not having COVID updates for the portion of 2020 when COVID was not that bad where I was).

A global pandemic can have a weird way of making you reevaluate your so-called plans. Well, in my case, the pandemic helped me reevaluate whether all of the things I used to do on select Thursday evenings with my blog were things that: a) others wanted of my blog and/or b) I wanted of my blog.

Here is the result of my reevaluation:

Going forward, I do not plan on usually republishing old blog posts.

Even though there seemed to be some support of my republishing old blog posts when I contemplated starting the practice, the reality is that republished old blog posts don’t seem to be that popular or that well-read, even among some of my newer readers. While I’m not one who likes my content to be driven based on popularity, republishing old posts was, in part, a way to help newer readers connect with older content—something that just didn’t happen as I expected.

That being said, there may be some occasions when I realize that an old blog post needs significant revisions. In such circumstances, I may yet republish a significantly revised blog post. I don’t expect that to happen often, but it may happen.

I still see a place on this blog for blog news posts.

I am not a fan of suddenly making a significant change to the blog or its content without announcing it first. Such announcements tend to be made through blog news posts such as this one.

I am “semi-retiring” from doing blog award posts.

This is something that I have been thinking about for some time, and this is not a decision I take lightly.

I am flattered and honored that there are some bloggers who think that my content is good enough to merit a nomination for a blogging award. And, in recognition of the fact that I am flattered and honored with getting such awards, I still plan on mentioning who nominated me for which awards at the end of a calendar year.

However, these awards (and subsequent award posts) come to me every 2-6 months at this point, and it is honestly time-consuming to put together these posts (between the answering of questions, looking at which blogs I want to nominate, etc.)—posts that aren’t even read much if at all by readers more than a few days after I publish them. The bottom line is that I see more drawbacks than benefits of writing blog award posts at this stage of my blogging life. The one exception I will make is if I get a blog award that seems particularly prestigious.[1]

However, the one aspect of blog award posts that I still want to do is making my readers aware of other blogs that I think are worth reading. This brings me to my next announcement in this blog post full of announcements…

I am as enthusiastic as ever about sharing others’ posts, even though I haven’t been good as of late about documenting for myself which posts seem worthy of sharing.

I recognize the fact that my perspective has its significant limits, as I’m white, able-bodied, and middle class in the United States of America (to name a few of my identities). Yes, I try to educate myself as much as I can, and I try to share a lot of what I learn with others. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that my perspective on a lot of things, including when it comes to issues of injustice, has its limits due to my life experiences.

As such, I really want to amplify the voices of bloggers who have perspectives I may lack. That is where sharing others’ blog posts comes in.

While content from me tends to be more popular than the content I share from other bloggers, I still hope that sharing content from others will become an important part of my blog again.

I also hope to resume the posts offering blog advice.

I have now been blogging for over four years. While I’m not the biggest blogger on the planet, I have a decent-sized following for someone who’s not a celebrity, and therefore I feel that I have some wisdom to share with other bloggers about blogging as a whole. I look forward to sharing that wisdom once again through blog advice posts. While this blog is not focused on teaching others how to blog, I do see this being a piece of my blog going forward.

I know I went through a lot of assorted pieces in my blog news post today, so if anyone has any questions or comments about how my blog is going forward, feel free to reply in the comments section below!

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[1] By the way, if you’re interested in reading about whether to accept blog awards or not, feel free to read my “Blog Advice” post on the subject.