Three years of gopher
---------------------

Today is the third anniversary of this phlog!  I'm glad I noticed it
coming up before it passed - I managed the same feat for my first
anniversary[1], but completely missed the second one.  Funnily enough,
I did exactly the same thing with the first and second anniversaries
of setting up the Zaibatsu!  Seems to be a strength of mine.

In these three years I've made 195 posts.  Which sounds pretty
substantial, but in my first anniversary post I reported that I'd made
108!  That means I made more posts in my first year than in my second
two combined.  Curious about how my phlogging habits were changing, I
whipped up this little ASCII graph showing the number of posts made
per month for each month since I started (not including this present
post):

--------------------+
May, 2017: 10 posts |********************
Jun, 2017: 06 posts |************
Jul, 2017: 06 posts |************
Aug, 2017: 05 posts |**********
Sep, 2017: 05 posts |**********
Oct, 2017: 12 posts |************************
Nov, 2017: 04 posts |********
Dec, 2017: 02 posts |****
Jan, 2018: 18 posts |************************************
Feb, 2018: 14 posts |****************************
Mar, 2018: 14 posts |****************************
Apr, 2018: 11 posts |**********************
May, 2018: 03 posts |******
Jun, 2018: 04 posts |********
Jul, 2018: 03 posts |******
Aug, 2018: 04 posts |********
Sep, 2018: 01 post  |**
Oct, 2018: 03 posts |******
Nov, 2018: 06 posts |************
Dec, 2018: 04 posts |********
Jan, 2019: 05 posts |**********
Feb, 2019: 05 posts |**********
Mar, 2019: 04 posts |********
Apr, 2019: 03 posts |******
May, 2019: 01 post  |**
Jun, 2019: 15 posts |******************************
Jul, 2019: 00 posts |
Aug, 2019: 06 posts |************
Sep, 2019: 06 posts |************
Oct, 2019: 06 posts |************
Nov, 2019: 00 posts |
Dec, 2019: 00 posts |
Jan, 2020: 02 posts |****
Feb, 2020: 00 posts |
Mar, 2020: 04 posts |********
Apr, 2020: 00 posts |
May, 2020: 03 posts |******
--------------------+

There have been ups and downs over the years, but it's only relatively
recently that I have started missing months out entirely.  To some
extent I can blame this on the move to Sweden, which happened in
December last year after lots of preparation in November.  But there's
something else to consider, too.  That big ol' spike of activity last
June corresponds to the birth of the Gemini project, and tellingly the
first empty month appears right after it.

I'm hoping I can turn this trend around in the coming year and phlog
more regularly.  I'm not sure I'll be able return to my first year
levels again anytime soon; I remember those early days extremely
fondly, but I was also putting almost all of my energy into phlogging
then, without running a pubnix or developing a new protocol on the
side.  I *think* the other phloggers who were most active with me at
that time are also a little less active these days than then, but
maybe that's just something I tell myself...

Back in my first anniversary post I noticed that I'd done a pretty bad
job of sticking to my originally stated goal for this phlog, which was
to "put some structure to various swirling thoughts I've been having
for years on the state of the internet".  I'm not sure that I've
really managed to make things any more focussed.  On the whole, I
think I'm okay with this.  That said, as of recently this phlog now
exists in parallel with a series of "gemlogs" (Gemini logs[2]) on
specific topics - one on cycling and a soon to be created one on
photography (maybe one on music, too?  What a rampage!).  This means
I'll be talking about those subjects less here.  I definitely,
sincerely want to keep this phlog alive alongside my attempts to
establish Gemini, but I also *really* don't want it to become a "waste
paper phlog" where I stick random, low-effort content.  So I do intend
to try to cultivate a slightly more narrow focus here.  I'm not sure
exactly what form that will take, but don't expect a radical departure
from stuff I've written about previously!

Looking forward to many more happy years in gopherspace!

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/a-year-of-gopher.txt
[2] gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/~solderpunk/