Ten goals for mandarine in 2007
January 25th, 2007Even though I had informally decided not to mention new year’s resolutions under any shape or flavour, Lorelle chose otherwise with yet another compelling challenge. Below the picture are ten goals for the mandarine blog in 2007.
- Stay alive. According to blog longevity statistics, the odds that mandarine will make it through 2007 are slim. I understand that the biggest issue is about time vs inspiration. Writing time is a real issue, because by mandarine’s quality standards, an average big post takes four hours to write. Writing inspiration is an issue because, as in many other creative activities, it tends to come in sudden bursts separated by long lulls, whereas publication should be steady. From the beginning, Mandarine has had a future posts ‘buffer’ (which I call ‘the oven’) that smoothes out my irregular production. With this device, the ‘one big post a week’ policy seems sustainable. Time will tell. Ultimately, if I cannot keep mandarine afloat, I will try to find an array of collective blogs (like over at WhatWeSaid) covering my range of topics, where I can contribute episodically. In any case, I will probably never leave the commenting business.
- Keep my blogging friends. 2006 has brought me the joy of new friends from all around the world. Friends of the rare and invaluable ‘can-read/can-think/can-write’ kind (otherwise known as literati/ae). When I started out, I had no idea blogging would end up being more about enriching relationships than about writing. I will be cherishing these relationships through 2007 by practising fidelity to these blogger friends. The obvious next step will be to make sure I am around when Bloglily comes back online.
- Avoid overwhelming popularity. I often wonder how Bloglily or Litlove manage when they have more than 20 or 30 comments in each post and they want to answer each and every one of them. As a matter of fact, I had rather have a handful of true faithful readers instead of truckloads of occasional commenters freshly disembarked from digg, with the rare (but troublesome) flamer which I would have to ruthlessly moderate. I once wondered what I would do if I was nominated for 9rules or if some other publicity tidal wave hit me –not that there is any good reason why this should happen any time soon. I would probably take a break, stay alive only through comments at my favourite blogs, and know my true readers once the crowd had moved on to somewhere else.
- Fix the theme for IE. I will probably wait till I see what IE7 does with my banner before I visit css hell again.
- Add a navigation sidebar in the single-post view. Lorelle has been fustigating the default Kubrick theme long enough. Indeed, the single-post view looks navigationally barren to people stumbling there from search engines — the ‘back’ button is just one click away, while it takes some figuring out to find the home page, and at least a second click to understand what mandarine is about or to find categories.
- Answer comments individually, like David does. I find that I am often coming back to blogs in which I have left a comment, impatient to know what Bloglily or Emily or Litlove or Polaris or Charlotte have replied to my o-so wise or witty addition; and yet I do not systematically reply to individual comments here. Shame on me. Mea maxima culpa.
- Produce an integral pdf version for the blog (probably starting with my absidea articles) for peaceful offline reading. And if I am bold enough, an audio (podcast) version for all my big posts. I fantasize over the image of my best blogger friends listening to my mp3′ed voice on their way to work (or to sleep).
- Move to www.mandarinelechat.org. I figure the sooner the better, but I have to learn how to automate the migration of internal links, because I do not want any broken links, and I do not want to edit 500 links manually.
- Quit checking my e-mail compulsively for new comments every ten minutes. I am sure blogging can be enjoyed without its addictive features.
- Find a tenth significant blogging goal if I want to qualify for Lorelle’s challenge. Update: my tenth goal is to write shorter posts, or chop the long ones into smaller bits.
Great goals, Mandarine. I can certainly relate to most of them. I also would like to keep alive, keep commenting, keep responding to comments and quit being so obsessive. Let’s hope we’re both writing reviews of 2007 at Mandarine and Charlotte’s Web in one year’s time.
Forgot to say: The friendship thing - that has also been the most unexpected and the most valuable side of blogging to me. So thanks to you for turning up and commenting now and again …
Great list! And I’m glad you are FINALLY listening to the navigation issues. Remember, not everyone comes from your front page to a post. Most arrive via search engines and their back button is back to the search engine results.
You’ve put some things on the list that I will definitely have to consider adding to mine, darn it. hee hee
And if you decide to do more guest blogging than blogging, you are welcome on my blog any time. Just let me know.
Charlotte: deal. We shall be posting our respective 2007 reviews on January 24th, 2008.
Lorelle: I had heard you from the start, but was greatly deterred by my unfortunate mishaps with the stylesheet. Thanks for the invitation.
Looks like I’d better do this challenge. Maybe one of mine should be, “Get all blog posts ideas from Mandarine. You can’t go wrong (although I know, this one didn’t originate with you).” I can so relate to number 3 — would have no idea how to keep up if I suddenly had 20 comments every day. However, this worry doesn’t seem to keep me from engaging in #9.
Emily: I am sure you can take any blog post idea and turn it into something well worth reading. If you want, though, I can share my 100+ list of to-be-written post ideas (that’s a two-year backlog with one post a week).
I have to say that people leave such brilliant comments on my site that it’s just a pleasure to respond to them. Sometimes I like to ponder my response a bit, but they usually come in in twos and threes, so there’s plenty of time. My mother reads my site and the comments section is really the bit she likes best! She’s always asking me who everyone is. And the 9rules thing is not that big a deal, really. It’s nice to be there, but it doesn’t really alter the world. I like your site just as it is, Mandarine. It’s always thoughtful and charming and beautifully written, and it’s very nice to hang out with your crowd over here (several of whom are in my crowd too!). I couldn’t agree more that blogbuddies are just wonderful.
I agree with the others — nice list. I understand the challenge of figuring out a posting schedule and finding time for it. I’m still feeling torn about how often I want to post, but I suppose that sort of thing works itself out over time. I’m glad you’re committed to maintaining an online presence one way or the other!
litlove: thanks for the compliment. I am sure I’d be thrilled to have lots of comments, but I cannot help believing it would take me forever to answer them all — especially if I abide by rule #9, as they would not come in in twos and threes anymore.
Dorothy: my goal is sustainable blogging. This means that the blogging habit should not take up more of my resources than what my natural ecosystem can naturally restore, hence the posting schedule way more modest than what I could come up with if I did my best effort all the time.
What a nice post! Believe it or not, it was good to read that a “Mandarine Post” usually takes 4 hours to generate. It makes me feel a little less guilty about procrastination via blogging :-).
Well, I myself would love to know how much time other bloggers spend writing (and researching). There is a likelihood that it takes me so much time simply because I am an uninspired writer, but I prefer to believe it is because I often choose topics that are difficult for me — therefore blogging helps me be a better person.
For me, it depends on the post. 1.5 to 2 hours is usually the norm. Most of the time, I think that the post has been badly written, and the only thing that stops me from re-editing it is the feeling of guilt that 2 hours have already been stolen from my thesis work.
I think that part of it is OCD (Don’t all engineers have it? I am no longer sure whether our training makes it that way, or if people with a natural disposition for OCD choose to do engineering! I contracted it from my statistical signal processing class, I think.). My last 5 posts are significantly better than my first 5, so that does alleviate my despair a little bit.
That is why I am amazed at litlove’s creative output. It is day after day of the most well-written, well-thought-out and interesting posts in the blogosphere. You can’t help but get the feeling that this person is born to write.
I am not sure about engineers and OCD. But I am quite sure we will find out soon that litlove is more than one person
[…] year ago, I made a list of objectives for this blog. Not that I am a great fan of goal management, but a I need to know what I want, […]