End of Year Three

This post concludes the end of my third year of daily blogging here at the Retreat.

While the blog's growth tapered off, the readership has more or less remained steady overall; the posts that get the most view tend to be the ones that are most akin to timely clickbait material, which isn't necessarily a good thing (as the glorified bloggers at PolyTakuGN (or whatever front name it is this week) as well as the mainstream media generally demonstrate too well, but the regular engagement I get from the emerging core readers is far more encouraging. In short, the Retreat found its niche and therefore its readership, and those leaning to other parts are now happy that I maintain the weekly blogs for those interests.

I talked a lot about what I'd like to do at this time last year. After looking back at the start of this year, I can say that deciding to commit to writing novels was the only way forward for me given what I've had to work with until now. I had neither the skill nor the tools to do anything else. Furthermore, the streaming environment changed significantly over this past year as did the YouTube style of video channel, making me reconsider those as anything but adjuncts to the writing business.

TL/DR: Don't expect me getting into livestreaming or podcasting anything soon. While I have recently, at last, been able to get better tools I still lack the skills and my time is (for now) better spent on mastering writing than learning another skillset, not when I also have to learn the business side of the writing world.

No point in bemoaning the point any further. I'm going from amateur to pro science fiction author now, and we'll see how well I've done by this time next year.