On My Mind: Blog Plans for 2016

Let's start with Happy New Year!!!!

I hope you were safe and happy during whatever you did to ring in the New Year. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to see what's going on here, today and everyday you lay your eyes on the drivel I spill here on a regular basis. Before I get to any particulars on what I have planned this year, let's do a quick update on a few highlights from 2015.

The biggest thing is that you, or more of you, hung around this place than ever before.

As you can see, growth in readership has been amazing. Since most of you are bloggers, this also means I am always meeting and forming relationships with writers, far and wide. As much as I hope you love coming here, I love stopping by your place, taking in your opinions, and giving feedback.

Speaking of feedback, that has also been tremendous this year. Not only are you stopping by, but your commenting. From time to time, that feedback is you telling me that I'm wrong. Folks, I appreciate that as much as I do your praise. It gives us even more chance to interact and voice our opinions on film. Isn't that what we're here for? Every now and again, these might even turn into arguments. I even love these. Again, we're just voicing our opinions. It also helps that by getting to know you, at least as much as I can from this side of the internet, I know you're coming from a good place whether we agree or not. Even without the comments section, 2015 has still been the most interactive year in the history of the site. More of you participated in my blogathons in 2015 and interacted with me on Twitter, as well.

As for what I actually did around this place, I won't go into a lot of details. I did continue some features, added some others, and posted lots of reviews. I also added some pages to help you easier find all the Blogathons I started and/or were a part of, all the lists I've done, and all posts related to superheroes.

Enough of this, let's get on to what's coming up this year.

After all that I've said in this post so far, this first part of the plan might surprise you. I plan to cut back on my posting some. For the last two years, I've been posting an average of five times a week. I love posting, but keeping up that pace has become a bit stressful and certainly time consuming. As much as I love movies and blogging about movies, I don't want it to feel like a job. That said, I'll still be around plenty. Instead of five posts a week, I'll probably average about three this year. That might creep up to four because I still plan on contributing to Thursday Movie Picks (nearly) every week. If by the latter parts of the year, my activity picks up either one of two things happened. Spreading out posts a bit more helped me get ahead and I just have lots of stuff in the pipeline, or I'm an insatiable addict and couldn't control myself.

Aside from Thursday Movie Picks, there are a couple of other projects I'm taking on this year that I'm looking forward to. A few things are set in stone, but the rest are up in the air. Let's see what we got.

As announced a couple days ago, I am again taking part in The Blind Spot Challenge. Wish me luck completing that. Hopefully, about a year from now I'll be telling you how much fun I had watching all 12 movies.

In February, I am going to do something I really haven't in years past: make a serious effort to celebrate Black History Month here on the blog. I plan on posting a couple lists and utilizing my existing features like "On My Mind" and/or "Proof of a Movie God." I will also be looking for help from you by hosting a blogathon. The details for this will be up before the end of January.

Speaking of blogathons, the big one will return mid-summer. That's the third annual Against the Crowd Blogathon. November will see the return of Girl Week. I may be looking for a co-host for one or both of those. Haven't quite decided. That gives me three blogathons scheduled for the year. Still, I want to do one more. I just don't know what that is, yet.

Another goal of mine is making this the year of franchises. By that, I mean I want to explore several entire franchises. Some I'll have previously seen, but at least one will be completely new to me. Just check my Blind Spot List to see what that is.

Then there are reviews. This is probably where the drop in my posting will be most evident. I still plan on writing plenty of them. However, I no longer feel the urge nor have the energy to create a lengthy post about every single movie I watch. I will write short blurbs about plenty using The Quick and Dirty feature. Some I just won't bother writing about at all. Again, full-length reviews aren't going away. I plan on publishing several of them over the next couple weeks. There will just be fewer of them in the long run.

Also pertaining to reviews, I hope to shortly have a singular page where you can access all of mine up and running. It was supposed to be ready by now, but is taking quite some time to create links for six years worth of reviews.

Lastly, I will attempt to take part in many of your blogathons, too. They are a great way to meet, and be met by, other bloggers. Plus, they're lots of fun.

That's all I've got. Happy Blogging!