P2K

Marathon, Florida
24 42.40 081 N 05.68 W

It seems like just yesterday when wrote a post called Kilopost to mark the 1000th article published on this blog.  Now, here we are at the 2000th article.  Wow, some things go fast.

Since the Kilopost , much has changed.   Notably, Facebook grew from a minor site for college kids to a monster with nearly 1 billion members.   Twitter didn't even exist back then, but now it is well established.  I feel pressure every day to use Facebook and Twitter instead of this blog.  Blogging is seen as quaint and old fashioned by the technical elite.   All things considered, I like what I'm doing.  The frequency and length of my writings on this suit me well.  To the extent that you're still reading this blog, evidence suggests that you like this format too.

Why do I do it?  Because I enjoy it.   Where do I get the ideas for thousands of articles?  Simply by observing life around me and nature around me.  A second motive is to keep my family and friends informed about what we do.  In rough numbers, about 2/3 of my articles are observations, and 1/3 are status updates and travel journals.

I continue to have the mental model that, aside from family, my blog readers enjoy it because it describes the daily life of cruising.  My posts are not just highlights.  They include low and mid excitement days too.  Reading it contemporaneously (whew, heck of a word) makes one feel almost part of our crew.  It is our daily soap opera on the water.

A few times I toyed with the idea of turning this material into a book.  I've been stymied by that.  On one hand, the volume is too big. In book form, this blog generates about 500 pages per year, or 3500 pages per 7 years.   Too much.  On the other hand, I think much of the appeal of my writings is that the posts are more than just highlights and summaries.  As I just said, the day-by-day narrative conveys what life is really like for a cruiser.   Therefore, a "best-of" extraction of articles runs counter the the whole theme.

I do wonder if I might make a few bucks by making the blog archives a Kindle, Android, iPhone, and iPod app.  People would pay a monthly subscription and the app would make it easy for readers to start at the beginning and read as many posts as they like at one session.  No doubt they would take a year or two to read all 2000, and thus generate more monthly subscription fees.   So far, my musings have not motivated action.

How many of you have read all 2000 posts?  I'm sure that Pete and Dean have, maybe Chuck too. Jenny and Rich read almost all of them. If you too read all the posts, I'd love to hear about it.