This is the 300th post on this blog. 300 posts full of nonsense, stories, bald-faced lies and shenanigans. That doesn’t seem like a whole lot of posts when you consider that the average year has 365 days and this blog has been open for business since 2009. There should be at least 900 posts, but in the beginning, I wasn’t all that dedicated. Entire months would go by without writing a thing and I didn’t even feel all that badly about it. I was a slacker. Nowadays, I feel badly if a day goes by and I don’t write anything. The good news is that I write a lot more now than I did then.

When I first started this blog, it had no direction, no theme, no purpose. It still doesn’t, but there are a few threads that hold it together now. I have categories for fiction, stories, things I hate, experiences, rants, lists and a category called “On Being…” where I talk about certain traits that I possess. What have I learned in 300 posts? Have you learned anything? It’s doubtful. Has anyone even read all 300 posts? I’m not even sure I have and I wrote them. Anyway, here’s a list of things I have learned in 300 posts.

Things I’ve learned about writing a blog in general…

1. When in doubt, publish. You can always edit or take it down later, but sometimes, if you don’t force yourself to click on that publish button right now, you never will.
2. You never know what posts will be popular, so don’t worry about it. I’ve written some things on this blog that I think are really good. They’ve been solidly ignored. The posts that seem to draw the most attention are those that I hardly put any effort into at all, e.g. the post Natural Disasters which was promoted to Freshly Pressed. I wrote that post in roughly 10 minutes. I’ve spent far more time on other posts that I think are better, but that’s the one that was chosen. There’s just no telling what people will want to read, so don’t worry so much.
3. Don’t be afraid to share. Most of the people who read things on the internet don’t know you personally and probably never will. That’s ok. Just because they don’t know you personally, that doesn’t mean they can’t get to know you through your words.
4. Find your own voice. Be yourself, unless you’re writing a fictional account of a serial killer in the first person (like I did here) for example.  Let the words flow out of you without restriction. You can go back and edit them later. If you do this enough, you will find your own way of writing. No one has the exact same life, perspective and world view as you do.
5. Write as if someone will read it. A blog is not a diary, or at least, it shouldn’t be. If you put something on the internet, someone, at some point in internet history might read it. Think about that person when writing. This means explaining characters, situations, etc. as if they’ve never heard of them before, which they probably haven’t.
6. Don’t worry about writing themes. If your blog contains only movie reviews, that’s fine, but I’m talking about blogs like mine–a mishmash of random topics and posts. If you really want to talk about something, talk about it.
7. Learn basic html. It will make blogging much, much easier. Trust me.

Things I’ve learned about myself through blogging…

1. I can write fiction. It may not be good or even mediocre, but I can do it. There was a time where I thought I couldn’t write fiction at all. It turns out that I can, just not really well yet. I’m really surprised by how much fiction I have written and posted on here.  Eventually, if I keep writing it, I might get good at it. We’re not there yet though.
2. I should tell stories more often. I’ve always enjoyed writing stories about things that have actually happened in my life. I have a bunch of old ones that just aren’t written up electronically. I should probably get around to those some day. Yes, some day.
3. I’m a big fat liar. My most recent series, Well-Known Facts, is chock full of lies. One of the latest comments on one of the Well-Known Facts posts was someone doubting that dog’s mouths actually have wormholes. He claimed that my photographic evidence is photoshopped. It’s not as if I am a graphic designer for a living and therefore have an intimate knowledge of photoshop or anything. It’s not as if my well-known fact posts are tagged as “shenanigans” or “fiction” because then, clearly, they wouldn’t be well-known facts.
4. I hate a lot of things – at least 110 of them. I should probably start a series called “Things I Love” just to balance it out. Sadly, most of the things I hate can be distilled into one word: people.
5. Writing nearly every day isn’t as difficult as one would think (other than finding the time). When I started this silly blog, I never thought I’d ever have 300 posts. I never thought it would take me just over seven months to write another 100 blog posts. So, hats off to me. I’ll be accepting congratulations donations (cash or Amazon wish list items) or cake.Mmmm cake.