I’ve been working all weekend trying to get a brand new design ready for Sunshocked.com to go live with its 100th post (this one). As the midnight hour slowly approaches and the 100th blog post (this one) needs to be posted, I realize that I’m going to have to take a little more time with it than I had anticipated. It’s got some fancy stuff going on under the hood and it would be a shame to rush it. The next post will cover all the changes and why I made them.

As for this post, I had considered a “99 problems but my bitch ain’t one” theme, singing the praises of my girlfriend—with whom I’ve had a lovely time plotting and planning for our rapidly approaching moving-in-together. But, unless you’re a Jay-Z fan, the clever title could be misconstrued.

So ends the two weeks of constant blogging, not with a bang but with a whiiiiimper.

The Stanifesto is at 94 posts (including this one) and six days to go before the one-year anniversary. That means I’m still on pace to hit 100 before next Monday. It’s not like I’ve had nothing else going on, neither (Holy Triple-Negative, Batman!). Two all-day retreats for work, a few open houses for apartments, and my mother and step-father being here for two days could’ve spelled the end—but no!

You all are doing your part as well. We’re at 96 comments, so there are only four left before you beat me to 100. Special mention should go to Sarah, who’s had the most comments since the challenge began, and Brant, who not only linked to his own blog post about how love could be considered revolutionary (in response to “Totalitarian semiotics as pre-emptive censorship“) but then, possibly just to show me up, got married last weekend. Congratulations, Brant!

Overall, I’ve been very surprised I’ve been able to keep this going without resorting to terribly lame and/or tragically short posts. I think my writing has definitely gotten faster, if not quite better. Traffic to sunshocked.com has stayed pretty much the same, but two of my posts have gotten picked up by other blogs. I don’t exactly know the mechanics behind how either one happened and if my frequent updates served as a catalyst in either situation, but I’m pleased people who have no pre-existing inclination to care what I write here are receiving some value from it.

In other web news, today was a great day as I’ve managed to schedule my organization’s first ever “Web Retreat” for Friday, July 13th (ooh! the symbolism!) where my co-webmaster and I will be teaching a wide variety of topics, like Writing for the Web, Blogging 101, and My First HTML Document. Wish us luck!

This is post 94. Six more to go.

I’ve managed to write 86 posts so far since June 18th, the first of the Stanifesto. Some expert use of arithmetic will quickly reveal that the 18th is 14 days away and 86 is 14 shy of 100. You guessed it, I’m going to try and hit 100 before I hit 1. And that means blogging every day for the next two weeks.

Given that each Stanifesto post quite honestly takes a solid three hours including research, writing, editing, and making the thumbnails, that means that I’m promising 42 hours—almost two whole days—of work to you just to make the Stanifesto birthday party a memorable one.

How can you help? I’m glad you asked. First, the Stanifesto currently has only 83 comments. That’s less than one per post. Let’s see if we can break 100 on comments as well. Anytime you see a post without a comment in the next two weeks, jump in and share your two cents. Even if it’s to disagree with me or to suggest a more interesting topic (who knows, I might take your suggestion).

Blogging over the last year has changed me, but not in the way I had feared. I was worried about becoming one of those guys who never quite experiences life because he’s too busy thinking about how to capture it for others. I’ve mostly resisted that and instead used this blog as an opportunity to go deeper into experiences that I’ve had, to think about them more critically and challenge my initial reactions, and to explain them when possible to people who might not communicate with me regularly.

Though I started with the theme “Communication & Culture”, I quickly realized that this was really too broad to be useful, as it didn’t really limit me in any way, shape, or form. I mean, what doesn’t fall into one of those two categories? A quick look at my tag cloud suggests that the themes that keep coming up here are: activism, design, internet, language, and politics. I’m comfortable with that dynamic and, honestly, more accurate description of the Stanifesto.

This is post 87. 13 to go.