NatOctoBlogMo in Retrospect

This is one of my favorite videos ever.

Well, I did it. A full month with blog posts each day. I've actually been cranking out daily posts since September 21st and some days have had two posts. It's been a pretty wild ride, one that I took alone. But despite the fact that nobody joined me (sniff), I certainly enjoyed doing it myself, and that's what matters. What all did I talk about over this past month? What did I learn? Where will I be going from here (jump to the bottom for that)?


I started the month off with me talking about Dr. Who and our problems with out AT&T TV receiver in Yesterday, I Just Wanted To Kill Hitler. Then I changed gears entirely and talked about my problems with our congressional electoral system with The Congressional Elections.

I talked about how I wanted to do some Sexuality & Gender Surveys, which continued into a slightly related topic of using custom designed interactive media as a alternative to surveys for data collection.

Changing gears more than a race car I pondered an RPG idea for a game involving Time-Traveling Gnomes who correct the events of history, which doesn't at all segue into a discussion of things happening in my life with Potpourri. Real life talk continued in Work Frustration+3 videos! and then the boat turned back around to Voting: The Algorithm, where I talked about the algorithm I developed to replace the standard electoral system for congressional elections. It turned back to real life topics when I discussed the afternoon Sarah and I spent at The Symphony and some ideas I had for Tattoos.

Having not much to talk about I wrote Random Stuff 2: With Frontalot! and switched to heavier topics with Violence and Gender Norms and Population Growth. I wrote about some books we had recently bought in Books Galore before going off the deep end into game territory in The Plight of the Colorblind Gamer, BlizzCon Speculation, Pandemic!, Donkey Kong Country Returns Finale, and Rant: Skyward Sword's Right-Handed Bias.

I've shared ideas that I've had for Tutoring Websites and the problems that result because I'm Bad at Refrigerator. Then it was Blizzcon weekend and I wrote Blizzcon Monk Impressions and Concerns, Blizzcon - Heart of the Swarm New Units. I shared My Embarassing Story because my Blizzcon predictions were wrong, and talked about LGBT Representation in WoW Lore Characters.

The last week was a bit difficult, but I powered through starting with Questionable Content's Questionable Characterization, Gaming Update: Donkey Kong Country Returns in Bullshit (because I wasn't done apparently), Fighting Back: Getting Revenge for the Loss of Theramore, Shaman Abilities and Other Changes, Adventures in Amateur Games Design part 15. Then my love for long titles took a break with Demo Roundup.

Carrying me through the final stretch was a discussion of tax code in The Stupidity of 9-9-9 Tax Plan (I guess I was tired when I wrote that title). I talked more WoW with Preliminary Talent Builds for Mists of Pandaria. The longest title award went to Demo Roundup Part 2: From Dust, Payday: The Heist, BloodRayne: Betrayal, and Sideway: New York (SEO Ahoy!). My last post for the month was Big Orange Burgers: The Best I've Ever Had.

I learned that people are interested in video games, WoW, and my personal life. I learned that people aren't interested in the mathematical stuff that I post. Well, too bad, if it interests me, I'm going to post it here. You don't have to read it, after all.

This past month, I really tried to keep the topics varied and to be broadly interesting (that's right, I said it, even though everything I talked about was quite niche interest). I'll probably be making the topics more niche interest though, talking about my WoW thoughts more, and my gaming more. I'll definitely be talking about programming and statistics.

I'm going to love every post I make and not post anything that I don't like or don't think is complete. I had to make some concessions this past month regarding quality that I didn't like. I'm not going to fret if I can't get a post out each and every day. I think that pausing for quality is a good thing. 

I've also been working on some fiction that I may or may not post here, it will really depend on how satisfied with it. I'm very protective of it because fiction feels more personal to me than nonfiction. Nonfiction is my way of opening my mind up to you, but fiction is a way of opening up my heart.

I've made 34 posts over the past 31 days and I'm pretty proud of myself. I think I've learned tons about writing and writing good blog posts. I hope my quality only gets better.

This post will be my 186th published blog post here. I can't wait to hit number 200!