Blogging

My Two Cents

July 18, 2007 by Corey 5 Comments

Since both Charlie and Mike have weighed in on different aspects of this whole transition from individual blogs to group blogging on 10,000 Birds I figured it was time I threw in a couple pennies worth myself. It’s great to be blogging here!

When I started my blog way back in February I was mostly blogging just for fun but gradually it started to suck me in like some kind of internets-based black hole. I became obsessed with my readership stats and spent way too much time looking at them and devising devious ways to increase page views. Switching over to 10,000 Birds certainly increased my readership, because both Mike and Charlie had spent years building up a much larger following than I brought to the table.

I was also already getting burnt out on putting up six posts a week, every single week. Now, with two other bloggers to rely on I feel like I can slack off when need be and visitors to the blog will still find some great new content! Not that I plan to slack off too much, because I really enjoy blogging (and I think Mike hypnotized me), but it’s nice to know that I can. And I feel like the posts I write now are better because I spend much more time carefully crafting them.

Another great thing about being here is that both Charlie and Mike are much more computer-literate than I am, despite the fact that I am the offspring of an IBM programmer. Apparently, there is this magical stuff called “code” that allows one to rearrange electrons or something to bend the internets to one’s will. Anyway, I can remain blissfully ignorant and let them do the heavy lifting while I go out looking for birds. It’s one of those rare one-way symbiotic relationships.

I am, however, great at finding problems that need to be fixed. Like the fact that all of the comments from my old posts that came with me arrived at 10,000 Birds missing the commenters’ names! We’re (and by we’re I mean not me) still working on that one. Also, my editor is missing spellcheck, sometimes I have to take down and rewrite posts because I accidentally do something that nearly destroys the blog, and I have a difficult time making my pictures align and space properly. And my blasted cats keep trying to pet themselves on my hands as I type and that causes way too many typos.

The more I add to this post the more I start to wonder if I really should post it! To recap: I had the newest blog with the least readers, I look forward to slacking off, and I know precisely squat about the inner workings of the medium in which I am working. Well, if this ends up being my last post here we’ll all know why!

Seriously though, this has been a wonderful experience so far and I hope those intrepid few who followed me from lovely dark and deep are enjoying the new digs too. I feel like I’m living the bird-blogging equivalent of birding with Pete Dunne or Kenn Kaufman.

A final word of warning: if Mike ever starts swinging a pocket watch like a pendulum in front of your eyes, run for it!

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.