Here it is again, the address to my new blog, just in case: treshabarger.com.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

(1) From now on, I’ll be posting on www.treshabarger.com and I invite you to join me there. This will be the last post on this blog.

(2) I learned a lot about my writing by blogging every day in 2010. Why did I blog every single day in 2010? I’m glad you asked.

WordPress, the blog host, sent out a challenge in late 2010 for their bloggers to either post every day in 2011 or post every week in 2011. I was already blogging about three times a week on It’s a long story. I also had a second blog, Perceptions, where I was posting quotes until I figured out what else I wanted to write about. I decided to do Postaweek2011 on It’s a long story (as I was already posting each week) and Postaday2011 on Perceptions. Sure, why not?

Posting to both blogs was fairly easy through January 2010. February was a little harder. By March, I was wondering, “What was I thinking?” Posting every.single.day? It just got harder. Once in a while I had enough material to post a few days ahead, but that was a rarity. Even then, those few days of grace disappeared in a blink of an eye and then it was time to post yet again.

WordPress supported their bloggers by providing a daily writing prompt. I used only a few; most were too serious for me. They also started a weekly photo challenge sometime in 2011. I was happy to discover that for most of the photo challenges, I already had a photograph that I could use. For some of the subjects, I had to go out and find something. (I love my little point-and-shoot camera.) But remember that I had two blogs, therefore I had to have two different photos for the weekly photo challenge. That was my rule, not theirs. Oh, the restraints I put on myself!

On December 25th and 26th, I used the same blog post and photos (Christmas Truce and Gift Suggestions, respectively) for both blogs. I think those are the only two that I cross-posted. Oh, and this one; that makes three.

One day at a time

I wanted to keep track of my Postaday2011 posts, so I included “Postaday2011 #nnn” where the “nnn” is the Julian date. I mentally calculated the Julian date through January, February and part of March. After that, I just wanted to look it up, so I found a Julian calendar online and printed it out. (I think my brain was already tired from posting to both blogs.) I used one slash to note that I had scheduled a post for my Postaday2011 blog, Perceptions. I used the other slash for It’s a long story. Thanks to WordPress sending out information to their bloggers, I learned how to schedule a post. I usually wrote my entries between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. and scheduled them for the next morning at 1:01 a.m. (Love that feature, WordPress!)

Another wonderful WordPress feature is the statistic tracker. Bloggers can see how many people have read their blog on any given day and when their best day was. I was always happy to see the count at one, which is way higher than zero. When the count got up to three, I was very happy! My highest count for one day for Perceptions was 172. It helps when your post is about an author you’ve met, you write on their Facebook wall with your post link and some of the author’s friends check out your blog. (I’ll have to do that again.) My highest count for It’s a long story was 381. I gave my card to someone who went home and read every single post I had so far; she told me so the next day. I thought it was an error when I looked at the count. I had the normal count of one or two going on and then I had a giant spike, but it was true. What wasn’t true was the 500+ count on April 1. It was WordPress’s April Fool’s joke on me. It sure looked nice.

Back to the Julian calendar. My intent was to keep it on the top of my computer desk at all times. (There it is, another pesky good intention.) The reality was that it got buried in a day or two. I thought I kept pulling it out and putting it on top, but the next day I’d sit down to write and it would be on the bottom. Finally I figured it out. I was lifting everything else up, taking a peek, crossing off the date and leaving it where it was in the stack. The only person I was fooling was myself. (Surprise!)

Well, I don’t know about your attention span but mine is starting to wane, so I’ll wrap this up. Thanks for reading my blog! I’m hoping you make the jump with me to www.treshabarger.com.

Postaday2011 #365 <— Look! Number 365! Three-six-five! Three hundred and sixty five! One day at a time. WHAT WAS I THINKING?!! Hmm, that was sort of fun. Maybe I’ll do it again.