As I look at the date on my computer’s calendar, I realize that it’s been a full year since I first began this blog (!).  Wow… one year and 80-odd entries later, and it’s still a tremendous source of personal pleasure for me.

I remember hemming and hawing about starting this blog, trying to decide if my opinions on pop culture and science fiction were even worth a damn, let alone worth taking hours out of a week in which to put them into a blog.

I used to do occasional IMDB reviews about 10 years or so ago (I cringe in pain when I read those today, so… I don’t), and I remember writing long winded rants on sci-fi message boards about movies and TV series that I enjoyed.   And there was a podcast that I used to do with some buddies of mine about 12 or more years ago.   It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed doing them.   But sadly, life took some of us in different directions, and it became logistically difficult to get time enough together to do them (even with Skype), so we stopped.

Wisely, my wife suggested that I strike out on my own; either doing a video blog (not going to happen with this face) or… a blog.   That idea was doable; instead of writing multiple long-winded rants on message boards or IMDB, I could just do one blog and send it to anyone who cared.

Earlier that year during a summer vacation in New York, I’d also received the same advice from a writer/artist friend of mine when we were having dinner at his home.   I’ve only known him about 6 years or so, but I’ve come to deeply trust and respect his opinions.   With both his encouragement as well as my wife’s, I knew it was going to happen sooner than later.   It was just a matter of working up the courage.

And I also needed something to pull me out of a funk last year, since I was feeling pretty despondent over the November 2016 election results.  I try not to get too political on this blog, but I think some of my leanings are kind of obvious to longtime readers by now.   Nevertheless, misery and encouragement were a powerful (if odd) combination to get me started.

I wrote my first on a comparison of HBO’s “Westworld” and the 1968 TV series “The Prisoner” (basically how they’re both such wonderful mind-f#@ks).  That first crude post was inspired by a conversation with my wife and after minutes of going on, she said, “Honey?  This could all be in your blog.”  That was probably her polite way of telling me to shut up, but her point was well-taken.   So, that night, December 6, 2016, “Musings of a Middle-Aged Geek” was born.

The rest is me-story.

During the year, I’ve started to accrue a few subscribers and followers (I’m up to 31 now! Yayyy) and I’ve branched out on Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and other social media to try to promote my site.

On a typical day, I get anywhere from a dozen to 50 readers; which is nice, but I was of the mind that I needed to go big or go home, so I kept pushing.   Then some of my friends kicked in; my aforementioned writer pal gave me a kick on his Twitter feed and my stats got a nice bump that week.  Then another friend Gaz (who’s an amazing artist in his own right) linked an article I did on the online series “Star Trek Continues” to the STC FaceBook page and I got then-record hits over Thanksgiving weekend; 259 in a single day (!).  I know that’s not much for a professional site, but for me?  Those are John Grisham stats; this blog is a solo operation of one old guy, not i09 or Ain’tItCoolNews…

Then a freak thing happened a few days ago.

Last week I did an article on the continuing improvement of the Fox TV series “The Orville” and somehow (?) my story ended up on Reddit and HackerNews.com and it just… exploded.   A few days ago, I recorded 4,050 hits in a single day (!!) and even though it’s died down quite a lot since then, I’m still enjoying a bit of a bump from it.    HackerNews had my story ranking sixth that night (out of hundreds).

I was officially stoked.   I even got some wonderful feedback from those sources, as well as my first troll; whom I promptly deleted of course.   I don’t mind honest disagreement; hell I welcome it, in fact.    I only ask that any commenter be respectful in their disagreements, or I won’t bother to approve the comment.   This blog is my personal pet project and it means a lot to me, so please don’t shit on it.   That’s all I ask.

But any and all comments/disagreements/questions are otherwise welcome.

So, here I am a year later, and I’ve had a total of over 9,000 confirmed hits to my site and 31 subscribers (each of whom I’m deeply grateful to, if I don’t tell you enough).

I just wanted to use this post to thank everybody who’s bothered to take the time to read the musings of this particular middle-aged geek.

And there’s plenty more to come!

My wife and I have tickets to see “Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi” next week, and I will blog on it as soon as possible.  And of course, next year I will blog about all of my convention-going shenanigans, including the Doctor Who “Gallifrey One” convention in Los Angeles, Comic Con in San Diego, WonderCon in Anaheim, and (if possible) the annual Star Trek convention in Las Vegas.

Thanks to everyone (including those thousands of new readers at Reddit and HackerNews) for taking a look.

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