Well, that’s it folks. An unbroken, 2000-day streak of blogging, spanning more than five years.

I started this madness on a lesser scale back on August 5th, 2002, just when I secured the domain name. Like many, I started my blog as an outlet for my opinions in the wake of 9/11. At first, however, it was a blog in name only–I did not post regularly (just nine times in one month, from 8/5/02 to 9/1/02), and I stopped blogging because it was so much work–I had not yet discovered blog software, and so I wrote the entire code for the site by hand. (The original logo I made for the site at the time adorns the top of this post.)

Nevertheless, I maintained the domain name and in April 2003, figured out how to install Movable Type. I blogged for a bit, then broke off for my trip to Spain, and then came back, blogging several times a week, but not without breaks.

But then, on August 2, 2003, I started blogging daily. It was a conscious decision–I wanted to prove to myself that I could maintain a regular task. At that time, I had trouble when confronted with even mundane stuff, such as keeping a schedule book or regular exercise. Blogging without a break became kind of my demonstration to myself that I could keep up a regular activity. Plus, it was valuable to me in other ways: it helped sharpen my writing skills (one blog post made it into a college reader), and it forced me to be more read-up and knowledgeable about current events. While such writing was also an enjoyable catharsis, I didn’t have stuff to say every day, so it was often somewhat of a challenge to find topics to write about.

After a while, the streak took on a life of its own, and I didn’t want to break it simply because it was a streak. However, when I saw the five-year mark coming, I asked myself what I thought I was doing–after all, I didn’t intend to keep this up for the rest of my life! And if not at five years, then when would I stop? It’s not an easy thing to suddenly stop for no reason.

But I couldn’t stop at the five-year mark, not with the most momentous election in my life coming up three months later. But shortly beyond that was a different landmark, the 2000th-day anniversary, and I figured that that would serve quite nicely. It was only later that I realized that this would work out to be the day after Obama’s inauguration.

Not that I’m quitting blogging, or that the site is shutting down–far from it. I will continue to blog, just not every day–from now on, it’ll only be when I feel like it. That means that probably a lot of my traffic will switch to RSS, as it is of more use when you don’t know when new posts will appear.

Initially, I might not even stop posting daily, though I will stop writing daily. That is, I’m starting a new feature: Recycled BlogD (“Classic BlogD” sounds too pompous and clichéd), in which I’ll find what I think are still-readable posts from the past which are of some significance or interest, along with links to other posts of interest from the same period which didn’t make the “Recycled” cut. That ought to keep material appearing on a regular basis while not requiring me to blog every day. Considering that there are almost 70 months of posts (over 3,500 entries in all), even choosing only one out of every 30 or 40 would keep me going for a few months, even without any new blogging.

Also, I won’t quit blogging regularly, either–I’ll just be shifting focus. I’m going to try to switch to blogging for my college’s web site, combining posts on events and local news with articles on subjects of potential interest. Partly this is to increase student interest in the site, but it is also partly to increase search engine traffic. As I found out on this site, incoming traffic increases a lot when there is a good deal of content being produced; the more content you have on a wider variety of topics, the more traffic comes your way. It might be a good way of bringing more attention and publicity to the school.

More on all of this later. In the meantime, thanks for your readership, and don’t erase that bookmark–this site still has lots of life left in it, new stuff as well as recycled. Enjoy!