Blog Projects
Over the years, I have set to task on blogging about different subjects consistently or used the blog as my focus for a given project or challenge I've taken. I find this an incredibly useful aid for my self in determine my own understanding or sharing things that I am sorting out with others. At other times, the blog serves as a means for me to focus my energy to accomplish some larger goal. Some projects are ongoing; others happened and are now done. But part of the beauty of the blog is that the posts are still here for new people to discover.
365 Projects
Several years ago, I decided to use the blog as a means to attempt something each year. I stumbled into this with my 365 Books challenge but have not found a way of continuing it throughout the years.365 Books A Year
I decided to pursue this after a January month where I managed to read over 31 books, audiobooks, and graphic novels. I realized that maybe I could try to read a book for every day of the year. I did. I made it to 400 actually. You can learn about my 365 Books A Year project by going through the posts and seeing what books I read.365 Short Stories A Year
While the book project was ambitious, I believe the short-story project was more challenging. My goal was to read one short story a day and write a brief summary and my own review or critique of the story. I initially wanted to do it each day but found I had to start packing in the stories on free days and writing the blog posts in advance (or past due--ooops!). But I did get to 365 by year's end.365 Photos a Year
I followed the short story challenge with a photo reflection challenge. I didn't actually make it to 365 because I made the promise to myself that I would do it within the day in which I took the photo (something I recanted on later in the year because of a busy schedule). I got to about 276 or so, which I was still happy about. I enjoyed the daily challenge to find something interesting to capture with my phone and then reflect on the photo. I recommend that everyone give a photo-reflection challenge a try at some point in their lives.365 Poems
A series that I did not complete when I started it years ago but hope to return to in the future of doing a poem a day for a year.
Daily Stickman
This project started in August, 2016. (August 22 was the official launch, to be precise!). I don't have great drawing abilities. I never hard. But I do like to doodle and found myself drawing a series of stick people with different word balloons attached. I thought this could be a fun way of capturing another creative side of me or at least helping me do something creative even when there is not a lot of time to dive into story writing or other more taxing creative endeavors. I also found out that I could augment a recipe on IFTTT so that I could post it to Instagram and it would generate a blog post, which was pretty cool to execute as well.52 Challenge
In 2016, rather than doing a 365 project, I took on two 52 Challenges. The first was an article challenge. Since I've been in a PhD program, I decided that it would be interesting to start sharing some of the research that I have been coming across with readers. So I provide my own article summaries about different pieces of research. I know for some--they may find this a snooze. But I know others have chimed in saying that this has been quite fascinating for them.Image of the Week
After the 365 Photos a Year project, I also wanted to continue with presenting and discussing visual content. I moved onto images though and in particular, older images that I encountered in a variety of placed. The first 2/3 of which are largely from the Wellesley student newspaper in the early 20th century, but covers other interesting visual artifacts from old publications elsewhere in the last third.Other Blogging Series
Beyond the specific challenges that I have pursued over the years on the blog, there are also just some ongoing series that I regularly post to because they are things that I have an interest in or believe are of value to my readers.I started series in 2022 as a way of both providing opportunities for friends whom I don't get to connect with regularly to give a sense of what's going on and regular reflections about myself and my life to keep track in my own head and heart about life.