I enjoy writing this blog, and I don't plan to quit posting as long as I'm enjoying it. That having been said, I am planning to make some changes going into the new year.
There is part of me that hates to pull back at this time because my audience seems to be growing right now. The growth isn't huge, but it is significant. I don't get a lot of comments posted, but the number of you silently reading out there has multiplied by quite a bit in the last six months or so. Anyone is free to join in the conversation, as always, and I can't complain about a lack of comments as there are many blogs and sites which I frequent without leaving comments of my own. But getting back to that growth, I don't want to lose whatever momentum I might have built up by posting multiple times a week.
Still, I have other demands upon my time that I need to focus more energy on going forward. For instance, I've mentioned here in the past that I am trying to go through my sizable comics collection and figure out what space will allow me to keep and what must be gotten rid of -- not because I didn't or don't like it, but simply because there isn't enough room in our house now that we've added another person. Based on the number of views different posts get, some of the more popular posts are my looks at older books, particularly complete runs of short-lived series or a specific creator's run on a longer-lived title. Most of those stem from my time spent going back through some of the comics in my collection. But when I decide to sell something, I have to price the books, make scans of the covers, and list them in various places so potential buyers can see them. All of that takes time away from blogging and even reading.
That project has been put on the back burner a lot of late, but I need to concentrate on getting through this stuff. I don't have an exact count, but my collection at its largest probably ran somewhere around 12,000 comics, not counting trades, hardcovers and other collections. I'm trying to cut that down to 30 Drawer Boxes storage boxes I bought and placed along one wall in my new office. Maybe I'll post a picture of that sometime in the future, but the image accompanying today's post is 39 boxes and other loose comics that still need to be sifted through and even that represents just a portion of the total that needs to be gone through. These no longer fit in my office, so they are stacked in a corner of my wife's and my bedroom, a fact she is less than pleased by. She tolerates them there because she knows I'm trying to cut the collection down, but she hasn't seen much progress in the last few months. That project needs to get moving again.
I've also mentioned recently that I have cut back considerably on what I have been buying, both for financial and space reasons. The less I buy means less variety in the new comics I'm reading and discussing on the blog. That's probably fine for those readers whose tastes line up with mine and enjoy reading what I think about the comics they also enjoy. But some blog readers might be put off if every fifth post is about an issue of Aquaman or Nightwing or Lone Ranger because I am buying and reading fewer new titles right now. Maybe by posting a little less often, I can be a little more choosy about topics and not cover the same book as often.
Probably like most of you, the biggest demands on my time remain my paying job and my family, and that's as it should be. My wife and I used to have the house to ourselves and work at the same place on the same schedule. Since shortly after our daughter was born, that has all changed. We both still work at the same place, but on different schedules now. That helps cut down on the cost of day care, but I don't get to see my wife except in passing most days that way. I do see my daughter quite a bit, which is very nice, but also time consuming. When she was smaller, she took frequent naps, which made ideal times to get little projects done. She's 28 months old now, however, much more mobile and commands much more of my attention. Don't get me wrong; I love spending time with her, reading to her, playing with her, potty-training her, etc., but that leaves little time for anything else right now.
So bottom line is this: I am going to continue to post new blog entries here every Tuesday that I have something ready to go. There might be a week or two here and there where a Tuesday goes by without a new post, but I hope those will be very few and far between. And hey, things could go the other way; posting only once a week might result in a backlog of stuff waiting to be posted, thus resulting in some extra posts from time to time.
I hope everyone keeps stopping by and reading despite there being new content a tad less often in 2014 than you were used to in 2013. And as always, happy collecting!!
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