Halfway through

Yesterday was my half birthday. This means two things:

• In one year, I will be 59 1/2 and I will really own all the money in my retirement accounts.
• I'm half through with this experiment in blogging every day.

I know I already told you about how I felt about being one third down, but I've had a couple of new thoughts since then, so I'll pass those on.

I think I'm writing some better. My current crusade is to use the word "thing" less, and substitute a more specific noun. I'm doing this in routine emails, as well as in these blog posts.

I may be reading better, as a result of the fact that my default is to write about anything I read that I really love and want to tell people about. One of the more popular posts on this 59'th year experiment was the one I wrote about Little Dorrit after watching the BBC adaptation and rereading the book. Part of what made that one good was that I took notes about what I noticed and had to look up while I was reading it. I'm currently rereading Anna Karenina, and I'm planning a similar post about it.

I did finally get a request from a friend to change something. I had goofed and left his real name in some text copied from elsewhere on the web, and my blog turned up on the front page of a google search for his name, and he was starting a job hunt. Of course, I immediately redacted his name. It does prove that this blog has a higher google page rank than the page from which I lifted the quote with his name in it.

Of the top ten most popular posts, four are about the Boston Early Music Festival. I got a request this week from the American Recorder Magazine to use my blog post about the recorder masterclass with Paul Leenhouts, since the person who had been assigned to cover it for them hadn't come up with an article.

I still don't know much about who's reading this blog, but the numbers of readers are going up steadily, so someone must be enjoying it, or finding what they search for in google on it.

I still haven't completely missed a day, although I admit that days like last Wednesday are cheating a bit. But I had written real content, just in other contexts from the 59'th year blogging every day project.

Related posts:

1. One third down
2. I did it!
3. You'll have to read my other blogs again