On 10 years of Infinitefreetime

Luther M. SilerLeave a comment

10 years ago today, I started a blog.

Since then?

10,545 subscribers.

419,908 unique visitors with 745,292 page views.

4,260 posts, counting this one.

Those utter bastards at WordPress appear to have removed all of my writing-related stats, but I hit a million words in November of 2019, and since that was also the 3,000th post it’s probably not unreasonable to suggest that I’ve written about 1.3 million words or so here.

I’ve had at least one hit from damn near every country on Earth. The only voids on the map big enough to see are North Korea, Western Sahara, Guinea, Gabon, and the Central African Republic.

Not bad, for a site literally named after the idea that I was too fucking busy to have a blog.

This isn’t normal

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

Depending on how you count, since we were actually married on February 29, my wife and I will celebrate fifteen years of marriage … sometime this week. Or at least we should. We have no ideas, and no presents have been purchased. I tried to float the idea of going to Chicago and having dinner at Alinea and she was having none of it. That’s as good as I got. Right now I have Friday off, but I’m planning on playing Wo Long: Hidden Dynasty all freakin’ day. And the way I know I picked the right lady is she doesn’t mind.

That said, if y’all have any great ideas about what we could do with ourselves on either Tuesday or Wednesday night, feel free to air ’em out. Neither of us have any better ideas, after all.

On important dates and important dates

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First, the pointless griping: Film director Bong Joon-ho apparently won a pile of Oscars last night. I have not seen Parasite, which as far as I know features no American superheroes, although my wife has expressed an interest in streaming it once such a thing is available, but I have no reason to disagree with the award given that I saw virtually none of the nominated films, and in fact I’m saying “virtually none” here because I have no idea what was actually nominated for anything and it’s therefore possible that I’ve seen some of them.

Man, I remember when the Oscars were a big deal, personally, and I was seeing 40-50 movies a year. I really miss that, believe it or not; I just don’t have that kind of time any longer, and living in South Bend instead of Chicago means I’m much more limited in what I can see.

Anyway, point is the Goddamned Snowpiercer post is surging again; it’s gotten about as many hits today all by itself as the entire site typically gets in two days, and as it’s only 6 PM I suspect that ratio will be increasing fairly radically by the time I go to bed tonight, and the bump will probably last at least another few days. That post will never, ever die.

So:

  • My wife’s birthday is Thursday;
  • Friday is Valentine’s Day;
  • The 29th is our 12th/3rd anniversary; we were married in 2008 so it has been twelve years, and we were married on Leap Day so this will be the third actual real anniversary we should have.

We typically make a fairly big deal out of Real Anniversaries, although the last big celebration was for our 10th anniversary when we went to see Hamilton in Chicago. We are … somewhat bereft of ideas for any of these things this year; I asked my wife if she wanted to do anything either for her birthday or for Valentine’s Day an hour or so ago and I could see part of her soul die when I asked the question. Before you jump on my case, be aware that neither of us are either especially romantic people or big celebrators of arbitrary dates; we don’t make a big deal out of my birthday either, and Valentine’s Day has always been treated as more of an annoyance instead of an actual thing. So chances are this weekend is not going to be all that big of a deal.

But I wanna do something for our anniversary, dammit, and my first choice– going to Chicago and having dinner at Alinea— got shot down on account of being insanely, grotesquely expensive.

This is where you come in, Internet. What shall we do for our 12th/3rd anniversary? Give us good ideas; we’re broken and don’t have any.

On milestones

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

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This is the fifth anniversary of the beginning of this blog.  Starting tomorrow, it will be my longest-lived Web presence.  My very last post at my original blog site at Xanga, of blessed memory, was also a fifth anniversary post, but by that point the blog was all but abandoned anyway and I just happened to notice and post on the right day.

Amazingly, this is also a milestone for the number of posts I have made on the blog.  It is, believe it or not, post number two thousand and five hundred.  I have somehow averaged five hundred posts a year over the last five years, a number that I don’t even believe, except that I’ve checked it half a dozen ways and WordPress is insisting that it’s true.

I did have a two-year run of posting every day at one point, and I had over 700 posts in 2014.  It’s ridiculous, but it’s true.

It is rather difficult to express just how important writing for this site has been for me over the past five years.  I can’t really say that it’s brought me fame or fortune, but seeing as how this is the site that has launched my writing career (such as it is) it has genuinely changed my life.  I’ve written six books during that five years, started a company, and started going to conventions to promote my books.  With the help of my new Patreon site, I’m going to be experimenting with new ways to promote the site and my work, so the remainder of 2018 has a chance to be really big for me.   If I ever do gain fame and fortune– and, to be honest, I’ll gladly settle for “moderately well known” and “don’t have to worry about my bills”– the work I’ve done here will be the foundation for it.

Genuinely, to everyone who has ever commented, linked, Liked, shared, forwarded, followed, anything around here:  thank you.  Thank you so very, very much.

Onward.

10 years

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

February 29, 2008:

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I love you, baby.

(Also, because I can’t resist: my favorite picture from our wedding.  It’s my favorite because it perfectly illustrates how our family dynamics work.  My brother is the best man and that’s my mom on the right.  My wife is pretending she doesn’t see any of us.)

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