This Is My 500th Post - Yay Me!

I was surprised last week to see I was approaching my 500th post on this blog. That is a lot of 'musings' over the last three years. I have shared quite a few thoughts and observations but I have learned a few things too. Here are some:

Someone else always knows more about what you are writing about.
...Especially when it comes to music. I learned that lesson from my very first post when I reviewed a Tubes concert and got a fair amount of details wrong. I was corrected by the masses, edited my post and moved forward a bit wiser, vowing to either make sure I knew what in the hell I was talking about or make sure I was putting forward an opinion and was clear about that. Cause damn it, opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one.

Blog traffic spikes for the weirdest reasons
Looking at my topic links, I write an awful lot about Rush and KISS. But those are not the posts that people tend to gravitate towards. No, the one time this blog was completely inundated with traffic was when I posted about the new Journey singer, Arnel Pineda, and posted a review of the latest Journey CD Revelation. Ho-ly shit. My traffic was off the charts for a week and a half, and many folks used the posts as places to sound off on if they liked Arnel (most didn't) or if they thought it was the end of the world that Steve Perry was being snubbed by his former bandmates because he was old and can't sing anymore. Wow! I felt pressure to turn this into a Journey blog for the traffic alone but thankfully cooler heads prevailed.

YouTube links aren't forever
I try to make sure I have nothing but live links and videos on my blog but dang it if they sometimes get pulled down due to copyright etc. Jerkwads!

Promoting your blog is tricky business
I started this blog as an outlet for writing about music and posting silly crap for my friends to see. Once I got set up with Sitemeter and saw that people from literally all over the world were reading my posts, it took on a big bigger meaning for me. I thought hell, this is really cool, and tried to write more frequently and make sure I was saying something that was at least interesting to me.

And I wanted to get the word out. I started using Google to look up folks with similar blogs or similar CD or concert reviews, for example, checking out their reviews and suggesting they look at mine. But man, is that time consuming. But this was well before Twitter existed. Now, I Tweet after posting something I think people might give a shit about. It seems to be working, because folks using tools like Twazzup are doing searches on terms like "Porcupine Tree Review" and are finding my and other blogs with just that very item. And of course Google works too. Anyway, it's really fun to have a gateway for my thoughts that can reach literally the rest of the world and to see visitors from South America, Europe, Asia and even Australia. Hell, I am intrigued when I see someone from flipping Nebraska tuning in. Leave a comment and say Hi next time!

Blogging is a fun way to meet interesting people
My blogroll contains links to blogs from my friends or sites I want to follow, but I also have made some good cyber-friends with fellow bloggers - Layla, Chris and Seano come to mind and there are others such as Dr John who started his blog after reading mine for a while and thinking it might be fun (I attended high school with him as well - we were in band together - ha ha). Others I have linked to over the years have dropped off because they stopped posting for a long time, but that doesn't mean I don't visit their sites to check in once in a while.

So there you have it. A few musings from a muser. There have been times I have lagged on the blog as I get geeked up about new (to me) social media like Facebook or Twitter. But I keep coming back to the blog, as it's really the only forum that lets me get this in depth about whatever I want to.

And I will make you a deal - you keep reading, and I will keep writing!