Blaugust: One Week Retrospective

Post 7 of ? for Blaugust 2018.
So we're a week into this daily posting thing yet again, about as far as we managed before completely giving up the ghost last year, so I thought it might be worthwhile checking in on our plans for the month and doing a quick health check.

Have a settled routine
This one took a big hit over the weekend with the mahjong tournament pretty much completely nixing any kind of routine, not just over the weekend but also into the start of this one. I'm yet to find my flow yet (as demonstrated by the fact that I'm writing my Tuesday blog post at 2am on Wednesday morning), so overall, this goal is a complete disaster and I'm going to have to be wiser in finding effective writing time without it getting in the way of my other obligations in the coming weeks, especially as I also have to fit in moving house somehow.

Take Mrs. Owl along for the ride
The boss has been reading the blog and says that she's enjoyed it, so this one gets a pass mark for now. I do hope to be able to lift that mark by sharing some adventures with her to make some posts later in the month, but at the moment the full extent of planning them is contained in this sentence.

Let projects die when I get sick of them
The month hasn't really been going long enough to have abandoned any projects yet, but yesterday's gaming post was brought toward to replace the homily that proved to be too difficult to write. The whole point of programming in a weekly homily was supposed to practice both writing homilies and openly sharing my faith here, so the fact that I failed at the first hurdle is a little discouraging, but I knew that would likely be the most difficult part of my weekly programme, so I'll keep it for now and try a little harder to apply myself next Monday.

Don't bite off too much
In one way, I've failed miserably at this, as despite there being no need or pressure to post every day, I've been pushing myself to do so. That said, I've been more willing to compromise and put up half-baked posts (like this one) instead of my planned content when it's become clear that I didn't have the time or motivation for bigger projects. Maybe I'm learning after all.

Have a varied calendar of regular features
Having an irregular week has not helped with the regular features, but there's the bones of something workable at the moment. The Wednesday quiz got a little audience participation and has a clear plan for me to work towards. The Thursday Conversation is a big time commitment each week, but provided that I can get the reading done is always a lot of fun. The Friday crossword was a bit of an accidental addition but was a surprise hit, so at the moment I'm thinking of making it a regular feature too. The rest of the calendar definitely needs fleshing out, though.

Interact with a community of other bloggers
I've gotten a little behind on the blogroll this week, but I've tried to keep participation in the discord channel going and have had time for commenting on a few blogs over the week. I hope to dedicate a little more time to this too, but I'm going to need to develop a system and maybe cull which blogs I actually plan to read or I'm going to drown in Blaugustinian ink.

Include more pictures!
There's no picture for this post, so there's still work to be done for this one. Maybe I need to source more ties...