Retrospective

Well that's it. This marks the end of National Blog Posting Month (which I mentioned earlier), or at least my participation. So what have the results been?

• It turns out that over the course of November I wrote about 10,000 words for my blog. That's fully 1/5th of the goal for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so who knows, maybe someday I'll try that too. I can finally write my novel about the smart, hip, jet-setting, handsome mathematician who has men fawning all over him. (Hey, this is my Mary Sue, right?)
• I started this blog August 2005, which is about 4 years and 4 months ago, or 52 months. At the start of November, I had 162 public posts. That means I was averaging around 3 posts a month, until this month when I produced ten times as many. Or, over the course of this month, I've increased by almost 1/5th my total postings.
• Sometimes I faced some writer's block of course, but usually once I picked a topic, I found I had things to say.
• I've written about an enormous variety of things. I've talked about students and teaching (including the good, the bad, and the ugly), holidays, dreams, visiting a conference, and random musings of my own mind. Some days I wish I had a more interesting life, but often I like it fine.
• Not everything I've written has been a gem. But I've definitely written things I've liked, and some of them seem to have inspired other people to chime in. It does definitely convince me that I should write more often. Having an explicit (and public) goal definitely spurs some creative work. I'm not sure if I'll participate again in the project or not in any sort of semi-official way. (As I noted, I wasn't doing anything official this time; I just thought I'd try it.) For the moment, 'though, I may take a pause before I write again.

Well, a good night to all, and a happy upcoming December. Be seeing you!