The Anniversary (of my blog)

I read a statistic somewhere about the survival rate of blogs after the first year being rather low. (Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was or where I saw it, but I know I saw it.) I'd imagine people drop out from their blogs for all sorts of reasons. Keeping one going, as I've discovered this past year, isn't always as easy as it looks.

As I've mentioned, before WSW I wrote a comics blog which was picked up by a bigger website after I started it on Blogger. I was scared to create a blog at first. I'm not sure why. I suppose having the ability to control not only the content, but the look of a webpage was a new concept for me, and I wasn't entirely sure if I'd be up to the task. Still, I'd always wanted a web presence of some sort, so I figured it was worth taking the plunge and seeing what would happen.

I didn't expect to get a great deal of traffic at all, much less get picked up by a bigger site, but I did, and as a result I didn't have to think about things like promotion or advertising or anything like that, and in a way, that was a bad thing. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for the added exposure, but I never learned the things about maintaining and growing a blog that I probably should have. I'd get frustrated when weeks would go by without any comments, thinking no one read me and not knowing what to do to change that.

So when I started WSW one year ago, I knew I couldn't approach it the same way. I knew from the beginning that I needed an angle. I don't have to tell you how many film blogs are out there, competing for attention. I knew I couldn't talk about movies as eruditely as some, even though I certainly had my fair share of knowledge about the medium and the history. That's how I came up with the idea of writing about my experience watching a movie - it's the only thing I can absolutely call my own.

Of course, writing this way means divulging a great deal about my life, such as it is. Past experience has taught me to be very careful with what I say, so I'm always conscious of what to reveal and what not to reveal. There will always be certain things I keep to myself. For instance, I've been frank in discussing my friends, but I never betray a confidence or get too personal about their lives. Sometimes I leave out names completely.

Also, there are some things I simply don't wanna get into in a public forum because they are so personal. It always amazes me how in this age of Facebook and other social networks, people are willing to reveal so much about their lives without regard as to whether they should. My life has not been particularly spectacular, but I like to think I've accomplished a few things, gone a bunch of places, and learned a thing or two, and I've tried to put that in this blog through the lens of movies.

Over this past year, I've come to believe that our experiences watching movies mean just as much as the movies themselves. Being angry or sick or bored, seeing a film with friends or solo, with a packed house or all alone, absolutely has an effect on the way one feels about a movie, and by acknowledging that, I like to think it can lead to different insights about the film itself - not always, of course, but sometimes.

My association with the LAMB has made me a smarter blogger in many ways, if only by virtue of being around so many other talented bloggers. I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the ones who have had the most impact on me this past year: Hatter, Raquelle, Ivan, Rachel, Jess, Dylan, Castor, Ruth and Alex.

And thank you for reading.

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Related:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) - the first post!