Holy smokes, The Babbit's Grimoire is a year old today!
A Look Back
It's been really fun for me, writing on this blog. Writing has made me question a lot of different things, which has been great. By questioning things, like during a book review or a new trick that has been released, I learn more about the origin of things and even practice more outside of my general comfort area. So, by writing here I have learned a lot more than I would have if I, well, wasn't writing here.
However, I did expect to put out more tutorials but I really only wrote the one so far. I have had many planned, and notebooks full of them, but it just never really came to be. Same with reviews, for that matter. I expected to do a lot more book and deck reviews but ended up writing reviews of videos (re: Penn & Teller: Fool Us) more than anything.
I've also had a few folks write in about things on the site! Which reminds me, if you ever want to chat about a topic I've written about, if you have questions about magic or books or decks or whatever, or if you have ideas for the site, please feel free to contact me here =]
Content Statistics
Including this post, I've made 88 blog posts so far. In addition to those, I've made 19 product review posts split between books, decks, and videos! If you count product reviews as blog posts, that means I have been able to successfully publish 2 posts per week, every week for a whole year =]
I've entered in full details for 46 of the books in my library here as well. If you've had a chance to look at any of them, you'll know that some can be quite verbose (I'm looking at you Talk About Tricks). There are 90 more books that I've created an entry for as well, and about 50 or so more than that that are still on the shelf, just waiting.
As for decks of playing cards, I've published details on 64 of them. I have hundreds of unique decks, though my kids would say thousands, and entering these in takes a lot of time too because of the pictures I try to include.
I have really slacked when we talk about tricks and kits though. I've written details about 2 of them when I have closer to 20. Yeah, 20 isn't a huge number, but remember, I'm still new at this whole magic thing =P
Videos though, I've published details on 14 of them -- which includes a few full online courses -- and I have 15 more entries drafted and likely 30 or more than that just waiting to be entered in.
Looking Forward
I spoke above about learning while writing for the blog. I want to expand that a little by writing more in-depth articles, not blog posts, about certain topics. Perhaps general things like "the history of playing cards" or "the size + weight illusion". Yes, I'll definitely continue my standard blog posts. But, maybe throughout the next year I'll publish something more educational once or twice too.
As for reviews, that's going to be an interesting one. I finally created a YouTube channel! It's pretty empty right now, only a couple of YouTube Shorts on it. However, I'm going to start doing deck reviews there and, eventually, book reviews too. I will still write book reviews here on the site, but putting up a video in tandem with the blog review will be a lot better because it will allow me to perform a routine or two from whatever book I'm reviewing. I think that that would be more beneficial for you, the reader. For decks though, while I'll keep putting info about them on the site here, I don't think written deck reviews are very good -- people want to see the decks in action. Making a video is also much faster than writing about them, so it's a win-win!
Publishing two blog posts a week was hard at times. Juggling work, family, and the pseudo-pressure of regularly posting to Instagram was challenging some weeks, and a breeze others. Add in to the mix the data-entry for all of the things in my library, jeez. I still have a lot of data to enter, and I'm starting a YouTube channel, so time will be even more in-demand. However, I'm going to continue the regular blog posts. The data entry, however, will shift a little. I think that, rather than queueing up as much as I can, if I just do one thing at a time as I'm posting about it -- like, enter in the data for the deck or book that I'm reviewing that week -- it will make things a lot more manageable. We'll see =]
Another thing is that I've written this website 100% from the ground-up. I'm not using any fancy framework (other than the one I created), and third-party code is at an extreme minimum. Luckily, the foundation of the website is done. Now I just work on additions and whatnot. I've been working on some fun expansions here and there and I hope to release them throughout the coming year.
So yeah... I guess that's about it for today. Happy Birthday to me!