My 2021 in LJ
Here is the 2021 LiveJournal meme. Unlike last year, it doesn't give me a nice post count, but it is still kind of clever.
From a count perspective, my absurdly long streak of daily posts continued through the end of the year, reaching 125 as of the ball drop. That streak by itself would put 2021 ahead of 10 the 18 full years I've been on LiveJournal. However, when you count the rest of the year, my total post count for 2021 reaches 210 (including two private posts) or 208 (public only). Either way, that pushes 2021 past the 204 posts I made in 2004.
My top five years by post count are now:
2021 - 210
2004 - 204
2020 - 151
2014 - 145
2019 - 141
Of those, 2021 is far and away the best in terms of quality posting. Back in 2004 this was my only social media, and there are a lot of short one liners that were of dubious value then and are largely worthless now. By comparison, the trio of 2019, 2020 and 2021 are marked largely by consistency - I posted a lot each of those years, and the entries were largely lengthy. It's really become more of a journal at this point. 2014, the other outlier in this top 5, was the year I first thought that I'd done 100 posts in a row.
As my wife's celebrity crush, Steve Martin, said: “Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.” My writing is certainly better than it was five, ten or eighteen years ago, but I'm not deluded enough to think that is professional grade. Fortunately, I'm doing this for me - any value others derive from it is nice but secondary. As long as I find it enjoyable and useful, I will continue to write, whether on this platform or elsewhere. I probably won't do it with the frequency that the last two years of the pandemic has made possible, especially as my daughter gets older, but I'll be here.
I certainly have no shortage of ideas. My piece of paper with potential topics currently has about 40 ideas on it, six of which are ideas for full blown series ranging from 10 to 160+ posts. Another series has been broken down into at least 12 potential ideas already. In short, I have things to write about it. We'll see how it goes.