I've received this question a number of times and answered it privately so I thought maybe it should be answered here for all to read. This time, it was from John R. Troy…
I have a question based on reading your blog for over two decades. Most people who blog tend to not to write as much as you do, and many bloggers end up having a sporadic schedule, and give up, with the exception of professional columnists who are using a professional blog like Substack.
With the amount you regularly post, I am curious why you bother to make posts letting people know you are busy. There's the mushroom soup can which means you have to focus on paid work, and there's the Sorry notice which covers all other cases. The latter I get concerned about because in some cases there's been serious issues and we don't get posts for several days.
But in the former case, you post so frequently that I wonder why you bother putting up the can? We tend to get at least 1 daily post from you, in some cases several. Usually when I see the can the next day there's a new post. So I was curious if you have your own personal quota, posting schedule, or goal you set for posting articles, and this is just a way to compensate if you don't make that quota. Knowing this is a personal blog, I've never expected a quota of articles, I don't know of any specific schedule you have, and while you accept donations, it's not a Patreon with any sort of set standards. Outside of the "tradition" factor of the can, is there any other reason for the notice?
I post whenever I have the time and something I think is worth posting. I don't think of it as any obligation but I guess I've created a certain sense of expectation in those who come here. When I don't post when they expect me to, I get a lot of concerned e-mails and phone calls asking me if I'm sick or dead or sick and dead. Or maybe I've been arrested. Or I've decided to quit blogging because I haven't done it in eighteen hours.
For some reason, no one ever thinks, "I guess Mark is busy" or even that my computer might be broken, my Internet connection might not be working, my electricity could be out, etc. I don't like people worrying about me so it's easier to post something than to answer those worried messages.
In case anyone's interested: There are currently 32,566 posts on this blog of which 264 are "Encore" reruns. I started this blog — it had a different name then — on December 18, 2000, which was 8,814 days ago. So I'm averaging about 3.6 posts per day. When I started at this, a more experienced blogger I knew advised me to never post more than once a day, which is what he did. He said that way, followers of the blog would get used to visiting it once a day and would suffer no disappointment if there was nothing new there.
I didn't do that because I like the immediacy factor of a blog…but I guess by posting at all hours, I've developed some amount of visitors who come here more than once a day and I hate the idea of disappointing them. So let me apologize in advance for the next time I go a few days without posting.
