#oneaday, Day 100!

And there it is. With little fanfare, just after midnight on the day before my birthday, I hit the big 100. That’s one hundred days of continuous blogging. And, while some older entries have now been set to private for reasons I won’t go into, I have 100 posts all lined up one after the other showing me… well, nothing really. Nothing apart from the fact that I can keep up a commitment I set to myself to do something that I enjoy and is of at least marginal benefit to me.

Blogging is cathartic. At least to me. Some people focus their blogs on one particular narrow subject and make that specialist subject the only thing they talk about. I’ve toyed with that idea for some time – this being me we’re talking about, video games are a big part of that, but that’s not the only interesting thing that goes on in the world. In limiting myself to talking about one thing and one thing only, I’d be limiting my potential audience, even if the company I mostly keep online are largely video game enthusiasts themselves, too.

One thing I have enjoyed about writing these #oneaday posts is the opportunity to write something a bit different. Some days it’ll just be a personal comment, like today. Other days I’ll do a write-up on a particular issue. Other days I’ll post photos. Looking at the stats, though, it’s sometimes difficult to see patterns. The best day recently (with a mighty 90 views) was the day I responded to Roger Ebert’s “games will never be art” assertion (after midnight) and later that day (after actually sleeping) posted some pictures with the iPhone Hipstamatic app. The Ebert issue was a hot topic, so it’s unsurprising that saw a big spike. I had a similar pattern when I posted about Kevin Smith’s experience with SouthWest Air, another hot topic of discussion around the Internet.

So I guess if I’m chasing page views, hot topics are the way forward. Well, duh.

But I’m not going for page views, really. I mean, it’s always gratifying to know that people are reading what I’m writing (and even better, responding in the comments) but when I write these things, I’m doing it for me. Keeping it daily like this is like keeping a diary, something I’ve done several times in the past. I always used to greatly enjoy keeping a diary but always, without fail, ended up writing something so utterly mortifyingly embarrassing in it that I’d end up throwing the book out in case anyone ever saw it. I actually regret that now, as lame as the things I wrote were (usually involving chicks) as if there’s one thing I always enjoy doing, it’s reading back over past things I’ve written.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been re-reading this blog from the beginning. It being a blog and not a novel, there’s obviously not a sense of structure. But there is a curious sense of narrative, whether it’s saying an open and heartfelt goodbye to the family pet, discussing my time with No-One Lives Forever (still a top search term to find this blog), exploring the stranger side of indie games or reviewing a local band. I remember these things happening, as small and inconsequential as they mostly are, because I wrote about them. We all have “big memories” of the life-shaping events that take place in our lives – good or bad. But the thing I’m truly appreciating about this whole exercise is that it gives me the opportunity to remember the little things, too, however little relevance they may hold to the “big picture”.

If you’ve read anything at all on this blog before, you’ve shared in some of those memories. They may not seem significant to you. Some of them don’t even seem significant to me. But thanks for letting me share all those things with you. I hope I’ve entertained, informed or at least given you something to do while you’re bored. I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them – at no point has it ever felt like a chore. Which is, as they say, a Good Thing.

It figures that on a big milestone day like this one, I go off onto a completely dumb stream of consciousness ramble. There are many more days ahead of this one, each holding new memories ready to commit to a post. I’m looking forward, wondering what will come next.

Here’s to the next 100. Good night.