So the first year of me having a blog is coming to a close. Well, I’ve only had it about 10 months, but it is the end of the year in which I started it. I have not done such a good job of updating it regularly. I hope to do a better job next year.
I have learned a whole lot this year. I’ve learned I was a bit too ambitious with my plan to do episode-by-episode reviews of 4 or 5 television shows. Even at a pace of an episode a day, it would take me more than a year to finish. So I am not planning to continue my planned Watch This project for the time being. Consider it on hiatus. I will finish Futurama Season 1, hopefully by the end of January, but no more. At least not until I can figure out a way to do it that I’m happier with.
I was also a little too ambitious with the 25 years of NES, as well. Apparently, between work and my other hobbies I was not able to write 25,000 words about NES games. Still I have about a third of them done and another third written and ready to go. So I will finish that project. And as long as I get it done before October next year it is still 25 years of NES, so it’s all good.
I also did not get around to writing much about sports or books. I was going to post my thoughts about each weekend of football, but I ended working every weekend, so I did not get to watch enough football to feel comfortable putting out any observations or analysis. Rare was the opportunity I had to watch a full game. As for books, it is not that I did not read any. I read more than 20 new books this year, along with rereading about another 20 or so. The reason I did not manage to post more than once about them is that I try to make my writing about books more . . . substantial, and I simply failed to allocate enough writing time to get anything good done.
Moving away from making feeble excuses for my lack of output, I am happy with my movie reviews. I am a little disappointed that I did not manage to write reviews for Red or Scott Pilgrim, but I’m not changing much about how I do movie reviews. Other than, hopefully, doing more of them.
So this year has not been great, but it was a start. “What am I going to do next year?” you probably did not ask. For one thing, I hope to post with greater frequency and regularity. I intend 3-4 posts a week. To facilitate this, I will not do any big projects, like 25 Years of NES or Watch This, though that kind of thing may return later, but I think I would be better able to get into a writing and posting rhythm if I allow myself to write about whatever I want. I will try for variety, but more important to me right now is quantity.
The big change I am planning, and enacting very soon, is a new blog title. Critical Ramblings sounds like a lame placeholder name, but I couldn’t not come up with anything better, But now I’ve decided on one: We are Finally Cowboys. It is the title of a song from the soundtrack of one of the greatest video games of the last 5 years: No More Heroes. It doesn’t really mean anything, other than being somewhat childishly fanciful, which is exactly what I’m going for with this blog. I will also try to come up with “catchy” names for posts on every category. Something like “Scott tells you what to watch” for TV, but actually good.
I guess that’s it for my year in review. Now a picture of Wildcat on his cat-o-cycle.