Long Live Blogging

5/26/12 Gas Works Park

The day I began Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, trendsetters and others in the know had already declared blogging dead. Facebook, Twitter and other stuff called “social media” had been gaining ground for years. Not conducive to continual, real-time interaction, blogs were deemed too slow, too wordy, too 20th century. I had only recently become aware of blogs shortly before I started mine. Always on the leading edge – that’s me.

That day was March 18, 2012 – ten years ago today. I had thought about it for quite a while before I launched. What would be the purpose of my blog? How would it be different from what I do on Facebook? And if blogging was already dead and everyone was moving on to the next cool thing, why start now?

First, I’m a writer by vocation. I express myself best with written words – not clumsily truncated words to meet a 140-character limit or words riddled with typos because they were typed with thumbs on a phone – but carefully considered, crafted, edited and proofread words. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s the way I like my words to be presented.

By 2012, I had been on Facebook for several years, and I had noticed how difficult it was to find items others had posted. The search function was unusable (and hasn’t improved much since). I was even having difficulty finding things I had posted myself. If I had something worth saying or showing, then I wanted it to be easy to find on a platform I could manage to some degree.

Finally and foremost, I had just started learning to draw about six months prior. It was the first time in my life that I had the opportunity to document my own creative process nearly from the beginning. Blogging seemed like the appropriate medium for a visual practice.

3/12/13 Zoka Coffee

As I began drafting my first posts, I felt like I had plenty to say. Since I was trying to draw daily, I thought I would be able to create new content regularly. Even so, I gave myself full permission to stop blogging any time I wanted to. If I got bored, or the process gave me more pressure than pleasure, I could end it without apology or excuse. It would be nothing more than an experiment.

As the months went on, I saw that a few people were visiting my blog, but comments were rare. I figured I was mostly talking to myself, and I was OK with that. I truly enjoyed analyzing and articulating process thoughts or telling the stories that went along with my urban sketches. To my surprise, the blog itself began motivating me to keep sketching every day – not because I thought I had an “audience” to entertain but because I enjoyed the habit and process. In that way, it was like the written journal I had been keeping most of my life – except now I had to use my professional editing chops to clean up my writing for public consumption (which I do not do in my personal journal).

In addition to process documentation and storytelling, I knew that I would talk about art materials (because who doesn’t like to talk about art materials?). I didn’t realize, however, how much I would enjoy writing product reviews. Obviously, I sometimes have strong opinions about the materials I use, and it’s fun to pontificate. (My product reviews are always the most popular posts, so I have to assume readers are interested in my pontifications.)

2/5/14 Forza Cafe

The longer I blog, the more readers I “meet” through occasional comments and private email conversations, and I realize that I’m not always talking only to myself. Many readers have told me that they are on a similar drawing journey and appreciate what I share. It’s gratifying to know that others might be benefitting from whatever I learn and write about. It adds to my motivation to keep blogging.

I have only one regret: That I did not pay for a more robust and flexible blog platform instead of using free (and limited, inflexible and increasingly buggy) Blogger. When I began, Blogger seemed good enough for what I had in mind. Now I’d like a better platform, and I’m certainly willing to pay for it. But migrating 10 years’ worth of blog posts with tons of images and links seems burdensome and fraught with peril for a non-techy person like me. I’d rather use the time to sketch. (I’m still considering moving it someday, though.)

So here I am today, still using a medium declared dead a decade ago. To celebrate my 10^th anniversary, I thought I’d cite some blog statistics. Since March 18, 2012, I have published:

• 3,289 posts (including 274 product reviews or other posts focused on product information, observation or opinion)
• 11,421 sketches and other images (I don’t have a count of the number of sketches I’ve made because I don’t scan everything, but a quick look at my folders of the scanned sketches I’ve posted shows an average of 900 per year.)
• 994,196 words (Whoa, that’s close to a million words! I guess I do have a lot to say! My most verbose year was 2021 . . . a global pandemic will do that.)

12/24/15 Pike Place Market

According to Blogger’s statistics (as of March 16, 2022), Fueled by Clouds & Coffee has received an all-time total of 1,519,591 views (page views? home page landings? Not sure; unclear stats is another Blogger weakness). Google searches are my top referrer. Most of my readers are in the US, but a surprising number come from Germany.

My most-viewed page is Favorite Art Materials (15,800). My most-viewed post is How Many Colored Pencils Do You Really Need? (4,500) followed by The Colors of Autumn (3,720) and Book Review: Mike Daikubara’s Sketch Now Think Later (2,590). For the longest time, the review of Mike’s book was my most-read post ever (I think I got a lot of click-throughs from the global USk Facebook page). I can understand why How Many Colored Pencils took the lead eventually (hits on my product reviews and other product-related posts far exceed other posts), but why so many hits on The Colors of Autumn? That sketch and story certainly aren’t anything extraordinary, nor did it get reposted anywhere that could have led to more clicks. Maybe that’s just a Blogger glitch. (I don’t care enough about stats to investigate.)

Whenever The Well-Appointed Desk links to one of my posts, the views on that post go through the roof. Thank you, Ana – I always appreciate your boosts!

12/30/16 Grand Central Arcade

I have written a couple of other retrospective posts about my blog on the milestones of my 2,000^th post and my 1,000^th post (I meant to do a retrospective for the 3,000^th post, but I forgot). As I did for my 2,000^th post, I’m showing old sketches here that have nothing to do with anything except that they were in a folder of scanned sketches that I never got around to blogging about. Although my thoughts today are not random, please indulge me in some random sketches.

Blogging is dead. Long live blogging. 

10-Year Anniversary Giveaway

If you have read this far, then you are one of the readers I want to thank for your visits, whether occasional or regular. Even if you are silent, I appreciate your companionship on this journey. Knowing you are out there has helped keep me posting regularly (which I will continue indefinitely, even if my blog is the last one standing).

3/12/18 Green Lake

To thank you for your readership, I am offering a first-ever giveaway! If I reviewed a product here, then I purchased it myself (this is not nor has it ever been a sponsored blog). I also review products for the Well-Appointed Desk, where supplies are provided to me for the purpose of review. In any case, I have accumulated quite a few art supplies that were only lightly used, and even if I like them, I may not get around to using them up in this lifetime. It’s time to share!

11/4/19 Green Lake Starbucks

If the winner is in the US, I will put whatever will fit into a medium-size flat rate Priority Mail box. If the winner is in any other country that the US Postal Service will ship to, he or she will receive 8 ounces of art materials. To enter, please comment once below. The winner will be drawn on Friday, March 25 (selected by Random Number Generator), and announced shortly thereafter.