Calladus Blog goals for 2008

As my readers have certainly noticed, I've been absent from my blog. The last year has been filled with drama and difficulty for me, and this has set my writing to a lower priority, as it should. And even if my life were free of drama, I doubt I would ever be able to average five posts a day as some bloggers do. Nor would I wish to do so since those who do post multiple times a day often have a low signal to noise ratio... in other words, much of their content is merely commentary on current events.

Not that such commentary is a bad thing... I find it useful to read. And when it is possible for me to knowledgeably comment on a current event, I'll do so. (I may even rant a little.) But my wish is to contribute more to the public knowledge of a subject, and not to merely be part of the Internet echo chamber. (Or even the Internet cloud chamber.)

Still, I did hit a personal goal of posting an average of three times per week last year. My goal this year is to meet that rate, but in a more consistent and even pattern. Nine posts one week and none the following two is not a good way to retain faithful readers!


I'm starting off this week with two things. First, I'm restarting my “Atelier” series of Friday postings, but I'm starting it today with part one of a three part series titled “What is Art?”. In this I will give my definition of art, and explain what you will find in my “Friday in the Atelier” series. Next week I'll choose an artist to exhibit.

However, since artist biographies are a research intensive task (especially when so little is known about some artists!) I might, at times, give a mere sketch of an artist biography, with the intention of coming back to it at a later date.

Secondly, a couple of times a month I'll dig out a popular entry from my blog's archives and repost them. These will be articles that I think have current relevance, or are worth a second look, or have a high Google hit ratio. I may add to these articles, rewrite them, or republish them as is. I'll let my readers know when I've done this by indicating whether the entry is merely a reprint, or a revision.

Lastly, I'm setting a personal goal to write ten to twelve in-depth, researched articles this year. I expect these to be in the range of two to five thousand words each, and so in order to keep them easily readable I'll break them into series parts. I've done so in the past with good success.

Now, will I be able to do all of this during 2008? Seriously, I dunno. I've hinted to my readers that I have difficulties that prevent me from being as active in Atheism and Skeptical organizations as I would like. Those same personal problems may derail my blog too. This isn't a call for sympathy, merely a statement of why my posting schedule has been inconsistent. By setting up some things to happen automatically, I'm hoping to prevent future spotty posting.


So now here we go. I'll be posting Part One of “What is Art?” sometime tonight.