Blaugust

Blaugust 2021 Wrap Up

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Hey Friends! We did it! We made it through another August and with that another Blaugust. We had a pretty solid turnout this year with forty-five participants making at least one new blog post during the month. During this one month, we introduced the world to nine hundred and eighty-one new blog posts, which seems like a pretty big success to me. More interesting though is that this seems to have rekindled the fires in a few latent bloggers that I am happy to see back in the fold. Ultimately that is the part of Blaugust that gets lost in the mix, that it is a festival of blogging and that maybe just maybe it will prove to people that they can post on a schedule… then figure out whatever schedule actually works for them. While Nait somewhat disagrees with me about it, I personally do think that setting a schedule helped me to keep this blog active over the years.

However, you are likely not here this morning to listen to me wax on about blogging to a schedule but are instead here for the unveiling of the awards. As always I give the disclaimer that I am sometimes bad at math, and if I somehow missed a post here or there, let me know and I will correct the record. First let’s take a moment to review the definition of each award.

  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You created a new blog and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted 31 or more posts during the month of August 2021.

Newbie Class of 2021

This year we had four folks start the challenge as newbies, but two of them didn’t leave the starting gate. However, the two newbies that did manage to complete the challenge, did so at a rainbow level which is pretty freaking spectacular.

Bronze Club 2021

This year we had nine bloggers that got started on the challenge and made at least five blog posts during the month. Often times we set ourselves to a goal but fall short, however, if you think about it this way that is an average of one post a week!

Silver Club 2021

This year we had seven bloggers that made at least fifteen posts during the month of August. One of these is a little different given that it is scattered between three sites, but the count is tabulated for them combined.

Gold Club 2021

This year we had two bloggers, myself included… that got really close to thirty-one posts but didn’t quite make it across the finish line. However, they did have at least twenty-five posts qualifying them for the gold award. [Edit] – A miss count happened and as such Krikket is bumping up to gold.

Rainbow Diamond Club 2021

We had a phenomenal twenty bloggers finish the month with at least thirty-one posts. We had several overachievers in the group with probably the most staggering being Aywren who came in at forty nine posts.

Honorable Mentions

We had a number of bloggers who for one reason or another didn’t make those five posts in order to qualify for bronze, but I feel like it is important to give them some recognition for putting themselves out there in the first place.

Final Thoughts

One of the things I have done in past years is to post some statistics, so let’s begin this section by mirroring the items tracked during 2019, which was effectively the last “normal” Blaugust. In 2020 we had Blapril instead and a much shorter and more low-key Blagust.

  • 981 posts were made by Blaugust 2021 Participants
  • 45 Individuals Participated in the event and made at least one post
  • 2 Newbie Bloggers Participated and both made 31 posts
  • 40 out of the 45 participating made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze
  • 31 out of the 45 participating made at elast 15 posts qualifying for Silver
  • 23 out of the 45 participating made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold
  • 20 blogers made at least 31 posts qualifying for Rainbow Diamond

It is a smaller year than some of those in the past, but it is also a year where the community is recovering from the state of the world right now. I talked about it yesterday, but we no longer have Stropp and Psychochild with us and both participated in Blagusts past. I am extremely proud of those who participated or even thought about participating. It takes a lot to put yourselves out there, and I am hoping as we keep this institution rolling that it will gain traction with entirely new audiences. My wife runs her own Blaugust mirrored after ours, and it did not happen this year because it was just too much stress on their community. So the fact that we managed to make it happen and be extremely successful is a testament to you all.

As always if I have made some errors in my calculations, please get with me and I will sort it out. Additionally, if you want the full-sized version of the awards to use on your blog, you can find them on the Blaugust Media Kit page. Thanks so much for participating, and I will as always see you for Blaugust 2022.

Okay to Take a Break

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Good morning friends! I am feeling better this morning, or better enough to actually be interactive and mostly functional. Right now we have this weird thing happening in Oklahoma that is a perfect reminder that as a state we just get the weather patterns that are left over from the rest of the country. The air is filled with smoke from fires but said fires are happening in Canada and the Pacific Northwest but the current wind patterns are causing it to hang over the middle of the country. As a fairly severe asthmatic and one that is particularly susceptible to smoke, it has been destroying my lungs. For reference in 2005, there was a house fire down the street and that was enough exposure to send me to the hospital for five days. Yesterday was a day of rest and lots of Benedryl to try and halt the allergic reaction causing my lungs to stop functioning.

The results are that I feel more like a human being, but yesterday was not so much. As a result without really meaning to, I made the tactical decision just not to worry about blogging. I made a comment on Twitter given that the largest chunk of my vocal readers have a presence there where I sheepishly half apologized for not posting.

It felt strange that the key proprietor of Blaugust was taking a day off during the running of the event. I was rapidly presented with a chorus of my friends telling me that it was perfectly okay to take time off from blogging and that maybe it was a good lesson to present to younger bloggers. So here we are this morning with a post I did not intend to write on a subject I did not think to cover. The thing is… my friends are completely correct. Your health and wellbeing are far more important than maintaining a schedule. As a result, Uncle Bel is going to tell you a story.

The Grand Experiment

I am going to be completely honest with you, but right now my legacy in blogging seems to be the fact that I am more prolific than most. I am not necessarily known for the quality of my posts, but instead the quantity of them. Sure there are true daily bloggers that completely clean my clock when it comes to posting count, but people keep returning because I have things to say and keep saying them. This was not always the case and in fact, for the first four years of this blog, I was extremely irregular in my posting patterns. In 2013 I decided I wanted to change this and proposed what I then called The Grand Experiment where I force myself to sit down every morning and write something. The idea was simple enough, that not every blog post needed to be this epic tale and there could be straightforward “day in the life” style posts along the way.

In that first year, I made a total of 257 blog posts, which was over a hundred more than I had made to that point in the first four years of blogging. The more I wrote the easier it became to summon forth something to talk about, and honestly the more the barriers lowered in talking about my real life. I had always tried to keep my readers at arm’s length and never really talk about anything that I was going through. When you are blogging every day it becomes exceptionally hard to do that, and bits and pieces of my real life came through in this new journal format. Thing is, years after the fact I am very glad that I opened up because I can now use my blog as a way of determining when exactly which events happened in my life.

The Double Edged Sword

The challenge with blogging every day is that it becomes extremely difficult to stop blogging. You feel like you are a failure if you miss a day and for three and a half years I managed to crank out something new every single morning. There were a lot of days that I did not want to make a post and probably would have been better off not making one. The thing is I didn’t want to let that ball drop so I keep juggling and eventually reached this place where I felt like I needed to purposefully drop it in order to keep my own sanity. I’ve been so good about marking the passing of specific milestones, that I find it funny this morning I had to search for the exact point when I purposefully broke the streak. The history of daily blogging was looming over me and it felt like pressure pushing down on my shoulders. My ultimate fear was that if I did not break it on my own… I would potentially have a longer break when burnout finally caught up with me.

Instead of daily blogging, I shifted over to a format of blogging every weekday, which gave me a bit of a break on the weekends to recharge my batteries. The truth is I actually landed on a format where I took Saturday off because Sunday ended up being a quick posting of that weeks AggroChat which was more or less a required thing. In general, this was enough of a break to make me feel less pressured to keep things going. Even then however there are days when I just can’t bring myself to post like yesterday, and I need to be better about giving myself room to allow those days to happen. I did start out yesterday feeling like a bit of a failure for not summoning forth a blog post, but my friends came to the rescue and dispelled that myth.

Give Yourself Breathing Room

So while I absolutely think setting a schedule for yourself and sticking with it is a key trait in blogging, you do have to give yourself a bit of wiggle room. I am a daily blogger of a sort, but I give myself the leverage to determine which days I actually make posts. I try and follow a weekdays format, but occasionally there is going to be a day where that just doesn’t work. Yesterday I was sick, other days in the past I have been too busy at work or just didn’t feel like I had anything to add. Those days are okay and natural and it is important to let yourself have a break every now and then. Blogging is about the marathon and not the sprint. Ultimately we want you to be a voice that is around for the long haul and not someone that is going to be super active and then disappear forever. Breaks I think are key to that longevity.

Mixtape Mondays: Aether Consumed Prayers Answered

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Good Morning Friends! It is time for another Mixtape Monday, and I am going to take a moment to sorta slide into this discussion. It is Blaugust and we are supposed to be giving some sage advice or some such as mentors. This friend is what you would call a series and it gives me some structure when it comes to planning around my blog. I know that in theory every Monday, which is one of the harder days to be motivated and post something is taken up by a fixed construct that I can count on. This also gives me the ability to plan ahead, knowing that each Monday I am going to need a Mixtape to write about. As such I tend to have these super productive days when I crank out a half dozen or so tapes and then keep them in the bank for when I need another Monday post.

The double-edged sword of having a series is that you are more or less expected to keep it going. While you have a predictable slot in your blog schedule, it also means that you have to more or less produce on a pattern. I have been super bad at actually keeping series going throughout the course of this blog, and so many of these have been abandoned by the wayside. For example, probably no one actually remembers Easing Into Eorzea, Media Consumption, Steampowered Sunday, or Storytime Saturdays but they were absolutely series that I attempted to make a thing and now looking back had a shocking number of posts under each of them. They are failed series because I didn’t plan ahead enough or work on trying to create a backlog of content to post under each of those categories. Essentially my advice to you is if you plan on doing a series, treat it as something that you are going to create content for ahead of time so that you can meet those weekly drops.

Aether Consumed Prayers Answered

It is shocking to no one who has read this blog for more than a few posts recently that I am back playing an awful lot of Final Fantasy XIV. The game itself is great, but one of the things that have always stood out is the music. I realize there are a number of you that do not listen to in-game soundtracks, and I would say at least for Final Fantasy XIV it is a critical flaw in your logic. This game spends so much effort devoted to making sure that the music is great and synchronizes down to the frame with animates. One of the places this is most clearly evidenced is the Primal fights and something like Titan for Leviathan would not be the same experience without the soundtrack and the changes that are made during the source of the fight. This morning I share with you some of my favorite big fight tracks, while not all are from Primal encounters they represent the vast majority. Unfortunately this means that the YouTube version of this playlist is going to be super spoilery and I will give it a very special warning below.

Track List

  • Fallen Angel – Masayoshi Soken
  • Spiral – Masayoshi Soken
  • Rise – Masayoshi Soken
  • Battle on the Big Bridge – Nobuo Uematsu
  • Amatsu Kaze – Masayoshi Soken
  • Unbreakable (Duality) – Masayoshi Soken
  • Under the Weight – Masayoshi Soken
  • Through the Maelstrom – Masayoshi Soken
  • Metal – Brute Justice Mode – Masayoshi Soken
  • Oblivion – Masayoshi Soken
  • Birds of Prey – Masayoshi Soken
  • Wayward Daughter – Masayoshi Soken
  • Unbending Steel – Masayoshi Soken

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Normally I embed the YouTube Playlist here, but I feel like I need to give some very special warning with this one. Unlike is normally the case, the vast majority of these videos are actually fighting spoilers and show players fighting along to the primal encounter itself. This means watching the videos could spoil not only fight mechanics but significant story beats. Please watch at your own peril and I realize this is frustrating given that up until this point I have tried to give both Spotify and YouTube equal treatment. So I will link to the playlist, but if you have not experienced these fights then I highly suggest minimizing it and letting it play in the background without actually watching the fights themselves.

Well folks that were the Fourteenth mixtape in this series, and as a result, it is clearly aligned to being music from Final Fantasy XIV. I am going, to be honest, this is entirely a happy synergy that I did not plan in the least. I have been playing a lot of the games and loving the music, and this sorta happened spontaneously. Again if you are not listening to the music while you play this game, you really should remedy that. As always if you are so inclined, you can listen to the entire Mixtape Mondays Archive:

Happy First of Blaugust 2021

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Hey Friends! Happy Blaugust! I feel like since I am the instigator of this nonsense I am obligated to make a day one post, even though this year it lands on a Sunday when I am already making a Podcast post. For those who are completely oblivious to this thing called Blaugust, you should check out the 2021 kick-off information post here. If you just want a high-level overview, since August of 2014 I have been running an event where I challenge folks to write 31 posts during the month of August. This has morphed and changed slightly over the years, but essentially the core of the initiative is to spur active blogging in the community. Even if you don’t want to post every day, it is a time to dust off that blog and be more active in the blogosphere.

The Participants

It is by no means too late to sign up, and you can do so through the official sign-up form here. Currently, at the time of writing this, there are thirty-eight folks who have signed up to participate in this nonsense. I would greatly appreciate you going out there and show these blogs some love.

The Information

If you want to participate, it is pretty simple. Either start a new blog or dust off an old blog and start writing. Sign up using the official sign-up link just to make sure you are going to get credit. Tag your posts with #Blaugust2021 just to make it a bit easier to track them for participants. Join the Discord so that you can mingle with your fellow Blaugustans and chat about “bloggery” things. Finally, get out there and comment on other blogs as you hopefully collect enough inspiration to keep going for all thirty-one days of the initiative. If you want images or information, it is all collected on the Blaugust Media Kit page. If you work better with bullet point lists, I have you covered as well.

As always if you have any questions feel free to reach out here or on the discord. Happy Blaugust and welcome to this initiative!