Sometimes I have grand ideas for my time. Well, maybe “grand” is the wrong word. I have ideas for how I want to spend my time and what I would do with the blog. Most of them really don’t ever pan out.
I don’t want to say I’m lazy, but the best way to keep content flowing is to put together my posts in a specific way and avoid typing out a whole bunch of words no one will ever read, or pulling cards out for players I don’t collect, scan and crop and upload them just to fit a theme or idea or whatever. The other part of the equation is that I might have a loose concept, but I can never really tie things together the way I want, or I’m not as clever as I once felt I was. In the earlier days of the blog, I felt like I had an easier time writing funny content and adding more personality. These days, that’s a lot harder and I don’t know why. What that means is that I put down whatever I can in order to get a post out the door regardless of whether I’m actually happy with it.
It’s not a great way to go about things, I know. I also know that most people don’t really read this blog anymore. Maybe the two are connected. But, since no one reads this thing, I decided to approach it as if I’m just writing for myself. The end goal at this point is to show off all the cards from my player collections. The amount I have yet to feature is staggering and I foolishly keep acquiring more, and doing it faster than I can push them back out.
So, I don’t have time to do some of the things I kinda want to do, but I also am under the impression that people will not actually care if I do them or not.
One of those things that I keep thinking about is doing box reviews again. If I were to do anything, it would be that. I still enjoy opening boxes immensely and I loved doing the video reviews with Andy and taking turns doing the written form.
But that took forever. And obviously Andy is long gone from the collecting world, and I’m not equipped to do videos on my own (both in terms of worthwhile equipment and in terms of editing skills and in terms of time to devote to putting them together). The written part is fun, but again it would take a long time, and wouldn’t show up until months or years after the product was released and so everyone would have an opinion on it already. If I’m not timely, I have to be clever or witty for it to be worthwhile, and I don’t know if I could do that anymore.
I don’t know. So, I’ll ask anyone that might actually be reading this a couple questions. First, if you are reading this at all, leave a comment so I know – even if it’s days later, that helps too. My analytics are turned off because it broke the blog last time I tried turning them back on, so I’m flying completely blind.
Second, if you would want to see me do reviews again, even drastically delayed ones, would you want to see that? I imagine it would be in the same format as the old ones (examples found in this link), but likely no video. Maybe an unedited, faceless box-breaker style video with bad lighting, if anything.
Would you want to see videos, even if it’s largely uncut or maybe doesn’t show my face on camera at all? I’m not sure what it would be (maybe impromptu review while opening boxes or packs). Would you want to see a twitch/youtube stream of me bindering my collection or doing sorting? A video with trade bait instead of the lists (although I like being able to update the lists)?
Should I get more personal in the blog? This is a little personal, but I could go farther. I’ve been toying with the idea of posting poetry or short stories on here, but the tough part is tying it back to cards (or doing it in a way that isn’t distracting from any serious writing or flow). Also I would like to talk about my travels, but again I don’t know how to tie it to cards without possibly going outside of my collections and that doesn’t fall into the main goal of showing all my collection cards.
Okay, well that’s not exactly how I expected this post to go at all. I guess basically I’m asking if you’d want to see me try to do things a little differently. Maybe if I know there’s an audience that is curious, it might get the creative juices flowing or force me to make more of an effort. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see what comes from this unassuming blog post title, if anything. Maybe the blog is primed for a reboot of sorts in 2019.
Box breaks interest me somewhat, although usually just baseball only. I don’t watch box break videos — I don’t have the time, and I’d rather be doing something when I’m just sitting there, so I prefer reading.
As for the other stuff, like they say, it’s your blog. I do get interested when people write about more than just cards occasionally, but usually there’s a connection to cards.
I like what you’ve been posting so you can keep doing that, you’ve got readers. Personal is fine if that’s what’s on your mind. I’m not big on videos.
The Real Person!
Author Jon acts as a real person and passed all tests against spambots. Anti-Spam by CleanTalk.
Hi Steve,
Thank you very much for the comment and follow-up email. I appreciate it!