The Last Day of 2012

If everything goes according to plan, this will post while we’re driving from Corvallis to Los Angeles. Tomorrow will be a holiday post, then we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming. Cutting a blog swath through 2013 like a mongol through an infantry line.

January 2012 is the month I started blogging 5 days a week, and February is the month I started tracking my traffic. The post Girls Will Get This… from April 2012 was the first post to get over 500 views in one day, and Crafted at the Port of LA from this month was the first post to get over 1,000 in a day. Crafted is also my most popular post, followed by Because Fuck Labor Day, where I talk about the false superiority of ‘flattering’ clothes. Third most popular is When Did Everyone I Know Become So Well Adjusted? which is the first ever Twitter Hall of Fame, a practice that has become a holiday tradition around here. Also, I really like making Twitter Halls of Fame.

Feb. 28 to March 28, I had 801 pageviews total. Nov. 28 to Dec. 28, I had 6,810 pageviews. At this point, I’m not really sure what an increase in readers will be good for, although I’m really happy you guys are here and I like writing for you. I’m still a little unsure about what this blog is doing, but I love it and I continue to write it because it’s a place that I can be in complete control, where I can find a community and hopefully do a little good if I’m able. It’s just at the start of it really becoming that, and I know that I feel good working on it every day, which is what I want in my whole life, not just here.

In the coming year, I’m going to continue to blog 5 days a week as long as it makes sense, and as long as I enjoy it. I also want to work towards making at least $100 a month from freelancing or other non-day-job related work. It’s set at that low number because I’m not concerned with income right now, but with consistency, and trying to get the revenue streams set up and working before I lean on them any more than I have to. Also, because I don’t have a lot of extra time (as any of you regulars will know from my constant complaining about that).

After every Oregon visit Ben and I return to LA with a renewed interest in becoming the type of people who can do what we love without living in a city. Which is hard for us because we work in industries that are not conducive to small-town living. But I have faith in us.

We recently had a conversation about out goals and ideas for the next 5 years, and none of them involve staying in Los Angeles. We want to live somewhere we can walk or bike to work, and we want to work in a way that gives us at least some creative control and decision making power, and where what we do contributes something meaningful to the community and to the people we work for (like this blog, but with money). I really look forward to living somewhere we can hike real trails and not the nicely manicured parks we find in LA. Above all else, we both want an end to smog, traffic, and urban sprawl.

I don’t think any of that is necessarily going to happen in 2013, but that’s why it’s a 5 year plan. Walking along the Willamette river with Pepper this afternoon, I realized that if I want to make these things happen, I have to get my ass in gear. After working 50 hours a week and going to school full time in college, it was nice to take an office job and relax for a little bit, but the life I want isn’t going to happen to me just by keeping my head down in the cube farm, I have to go get it. Good thing I’m not afraid of a little hard work.


Aw crap, it’s Dec. 31st and I’m sitting here adding this to all my posts because I said I’d have it here until the end of the year and I didn’t. I suck I know. Still, support Planned Parenthood because they’re amazing and the things they do are awesome.


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