My 1,000th post: Here’s what I need to get better at

393 days after my first post on this blog, this is my 1,000th post. That means, give or take, that I’ve written 2.54 posts a day for the past year and change. That’s cool, especially because I don’t usually write a lot of new posts on weekends and because I missed three entire weeks of blogging in that time since getting an actual job. I probably could have hit 1,000 within a year, but I’m happy for this too.

It’s been an interesting time in this blog and my life of late: the blog “turned one” (insofar as anything that’s not a living thing can “turn 1”) in Belgium, and I turned 34 (I’m a living thing, but just barely) a few weeks back as well. I wrote pretty transparent posts about my life and blogging and everything on the occasion of those two events — you can read those at the links in this paragraph — so I was trying to figure out something to do for 1,000. I thought about the old standbys of “Your Most Popular Posts” or “Your Favorite Posts,” but that seemed boring. I thought about waxing poetic on some big topic, but that didn’t feel right either.

Rather, since I’ve used this blog as self-therapy a lot in my life — here’s a good example of that, and here’s another one — I decided I’d do that again. 

My life is good, but there are things I want to do better, both in terms of my everyday life and this blog. Here’s a few.

Consistency: I suppose, at some level, everyone struggles with this. I don’t think of myself as a very consistent individual, though. Honestly, one thing I’m proud of with this blog is that 2.54 figure I tossed out above — this is something I’ve been able to do consistently, and come back to. I don’t have a lot of other behaviors like that. I want to be a consistent person in terms of my actions and behaviors, and feel like I understand myself and/or what I stand for. This is probably something that people spend their entire lives chasing, so I don’t think I’m going to do it in the next year or next 1,000 posts, but I’d like to continue to see it as a goal.

Blog Calendar: A lot of times, I just sit down and write something that’s interesting to me, or react to something I recently read. In December, I’m going to start plotting out 16 posts a month (4/week) and going a little deeper on those to try and grow my audience even more. This also goes back to consistency.

Working Out: Always a goal for everyone, right? I think I’m going to run the Cowtown Half-Marathon or Full Marathon this February in Ft. Worth, so that should be a good motivational force.

Drinking: I still feel like I drink too much, and want to keep getting better at that — for a host of reasons, from health to general adulthood maturity.

Keeping In Touch Better: You can write entire volumes about what social media did to the world of interpersonal communication, and honestly, it probably did as much good as bad — if not more good. Still, I have more free time than I’d be willing to admit, and I should spend some of that calling people, e-mailing people, and generally trying to catch up. They might not return it, and that’s always the danger with any type of two-way communication (this flummoxes people about e-mail every day), but still, I need to put more into this. I honestly believe relationships are the core of everything in your life.

Not Letting Things Get To Me: Things stick with me for a long time, especially emotional slights. I need to fucking get over myself on some of this shit. Here’s a small story I was just thinking about. Last Easter, I went and visited my wife’s family, right? A bunch of us are in the car and we’re talking about the potential of me and my wife having kids. Her sister, i.e. my sister-in-law, says “Oh, I just want (name of my brother-in-law/her brother) and his girlfriend to have kids.” Hurtful, bullshit comment — we weren’t talking about them in any way — but it happened like six months ago and it still pisses me off. Is that rational? Probably not. I need to get over stuff more.

Telling Even Bigger Stories: The most popular stuff I’ve ever written on this blog is the more personal stories (and a few true crime/management articles), and there’s ton of aspects of my life I haven’t explored yet on here. There’s always a fine line in doing that, especially if it infringes on the privacy of others, but there are more stories I’d like to tell and get feedback on. I hope to do that over the next year/393 days/1000 posts.

Here’s a picture of me sticking an orange in my mouth the last time I did a half-marathon. Seemed relevant.

Work: I like my job right now overall, but I need to find ways to contribute more ROI to it. Some of that involves the structure of the position/department, and some involves me. I’m hoping in the next few months, I can get a better handle on that. I need to keep reminding myself that I’ve really only worked here a few months, so I could be justified still being in the “learning curve” phase.

Making Friends In Fort Worth: This hasn’t really happened yet, aside from a few people at work, and I’m starting to fear this post I once wrote may be true. If you’re reading this and you live in Ft. Worth, connect with me. If you’re reading this and you know someone who does, send it to them. I just want people to grab a beer/coffee with from time to time. This is a big focus of my next year or so.

Understanding Myself: Do you ever stop and look at your life and think, “Man, I do some weird shit?” I’m like that. And honestly, I am probably pretty weird overall. I want to spend more time, both through this blog and through my day-to-day interactions, just trying to understand myself. What do I really want and/or need? I’ve done all the shit like Meyers-Briggs and Pre-Cana (Catholic stuff before you get married), so I have some answers to these questions, yes. But I want to start figuring out how I could take my unique talents/skills and really contribute to the world in some way. Isn’t that part of the goal of a human existence?

Anger: Sometimes I think of myself as an angry person; this ties into what I wrote above about not letting things get to me. If you want to be 1000 percent honest, probably a lot of my anger comes from some aspects of my upbringing — stuff I haven’t written about fully on here — but that can seem like a cop-out, because it’s pretty easy to blame anything on your upbringing. (That’s why therapists have nice homes.) I do get pissed about stuff a lot that I probably shouldn’t be pissed about, but I’m better than I was five-six years ago — when it used to impact my work more — and this is something I want to work on even more.

Tell The Truth: Just continue to write and say what I’m thinking, and be open and honest with people.

Google Analytics: I don’t use it for this site (because I don’t think you actually can), but I use it a little at work and for some sidebar projects. This goes more broadly with ideas like “coding” and landing pages/optimized social media that I’d like to learn more about. I know how to tweet and gain some followers there, and I know how to post to FB, but I feel like I don’t really do any of that stuff strategically. I’ve built a landing page, but I could always learn more. Learn, grow, be curious — that’s part of what life is all about, right?

Be a Good Husband, Son, Friend, Etc: That’s what life is all about, no? I mean, I think so. I know the word “good” is pretty vague here, but I basically mean “… within the context of the relationship parameters.” (Or something.)

Point is, be good, be consistent, learn, stay healthy, understand yourself, focus, ask big questions.

Here’s to another 1,000 posts — and thank you, yet again, if you even looked at one of the first 1,000.