Today this blog celebrates its 2-year anniversary. While technically the “official” birthday for the Crommunist Manifesto was the 4th of February, I started regular posting in April, so that’s when I start counting. Given that most readers here started when I was brought into the FTB fold, I have decided to have the actual celebration in October. For me, though, it’s been a great 2 years.
When I first began the Manifesto, it was really just a place to organize some of my scattered thoughts on race, religion, and politics. Call it a sort of written talk therapy. I find that my own grasp of issues improves a great deal when I force myself to move them from the kind of diffuse, scattered form where they reside in my head into sensical, written English. While I wrote as though I had an audience, I never wrote for an audience. In those initial months, I was surprised and pleased to have anyone reading my writing – after all, who was I?
In my first year I gathered nearly 50,000 hits – a staggering amount for me, especially considering that I’d done little by way of promotion. Thanks to some well-placed links from friends and passers-by (and some shameless attempts at promotion via Pharyngula), I had built a small cadre of regular readers, some of whom were strangers to me outside the confines of the blog. I had achieved some small amount of recognition outside my own personal circle of friends, which was a really neat feeling (albeit intimidating at times).
When I talk to people who mention that they’d like to start their own blog, I tell them more about what I did then than what I do now. Having this platform (and being able to share it with more capable writers) gives me a lot more freedom to slack off, which you saw this past week. Back then, I had to scrabble and scrape for every post for fear of alienating readers who were expecting a new post every day. The writing didn’t come nearly as easily then as it does now, and I was writing posts 2 weeks in advance just to make sure that I didn’t get ‘caught’ without something to post the next day.
Managing this blog still comes with its challenges today, but little by little those challenges are being overwhelmed by the rewards. I’ll be going into this in some greater detail come October, but for now I just wanted to mark this little celebration myself and share it with you.
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Happy Anniversary!
Keep blogging, eh?
Sounds so familiar. Nice to know that what I was feeling was normal, and not just the pressure of needing to write a new verse every day. Unlike you, I managed the task by deciding to jettison any form of quality control. Glad you did it the hard way!
Congratulations!
Happy Anniversary. I’m glad you joined FTB, I’ve greatly enjoyed your work. I hope you continue for as long as it is feasible and enjoyable.
Grats, Crommie! I’ve enjoyed reading your work. Ed & PZ have really put together a fine crew here.
I’ve changed a lot in the time I’ve been reading your blog. I’m still unconsciously wrong a lot, but I think less so than I was, and I’m grateful for that.
Happy quiet anniversary. Let’s all get drunk and party on the loud one.
It feels really great to see you doing so well. I’ve been more-or-less following you since your second (or third) Pharyngulation, before FTB officially existed. Your writing has gotten clearer, more self-assured and more accessible. I’ve learned more about antitheism, skepticism, racism, and sexism from your posts (and your references, like Tim Wise) than from any other source (save god Is Not Great for the first two).
Thank you, and keep up the good work!
(The Ph.D. race offer is still on the table, if you’re in for a gentlemanly wager. 😉
Congrats! You’re pretty amazing, and I’m glad you’re here.
Has it been two years already? It’s like what frogs say: “Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”
Happy Anniversary!
My current blog has had 147 hits since February.
I abandoned two earlier blogs because they weren’t quite so successful.
🙂