I'm going to be ditching my daily posts on here starting tomorrow. I still plan on writing on here regularly, but as the school year nears this coming Monday, I only have a narrow window for free time in the day.
What I've been putting off with that narrow window is editing my latest book, Neighborhood Watch and writing my newest one, a collection of true short stories. There just isn't enough time to do all of that in a day when you also work a job and raise a child. While it's been a fun and worthwhile endeavor to bring to you post after post since mid-April, I must prioritize my time with what I feel is most important right now.
I still plan on posting a least a few times a week, as I don't want to abandon this blog outright. It's been a fun run, as I've written on everything and anything. I averaged about 12 views a day and my largest view came on June 9 when I wrote about working my first job. It garnered over 300 views that day. That month, nearly 800 people viewed my blog and it was my most successful month. August has been my slowest blog month since the blog's inception in April with only 292 views so far. In fact, from Aug. 21 to Aug. 26, I had a total of two views total. I'm not sure if my blog tracker app is either broken, or if that information is actually correct. So far, 2,575 people came to kevinpatrickkenealy.com.
Nevertheless, even when I've had less views, it's been invigorating writing new and interesting content. At times, I have gotten down on myself about the lack of viewers, as I've written in my post, "I've got nothing," but mostly, writing in the wee hours of the morning has given me a purpose to wake up.
My writing career went stagnant after leaving my reporting job at The Sun-Times Doings newspaper in 2012. I hardly wrote a word until 2018, when I found out my wife was pregnant. That's when I wrote my novel Life and Death. Coming into a change of life like that made me realize that I should take advantage of the free time to write before the baby came. I wrote every day, and since doing so, I haven't looked back. It has become a glorious habit.
Stephen King said that you should write for you. I've had trouble doing that at times as I often I wonder why certain websites like Buzzfeed generate thousands a of views a day writing on goofy, barely readable topics when I attempt to write more eloquent posts that garner only a few hits. But it's the world we live in today I suppose. People are more drawn to looking at Gifs, videos and pictures than reading the written word. However, that doesn't mean I'll stop writing because that's the medium that I believe in, and I'm okay with that.