2026 01 01: Becoming a Daily Blogger
Free stuff! Come get your free stuff! Chicago, Illinois. August, 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Becoming a Daily Blogger in 2025 2026
For last year’s post about becoming a daily blogger this year, please see: 2025 01 01
It feels appropriate to check in on the blog in this, the first day of a fresh new year. Because of how this website was set up, I start a new blog section each year. This time, I thought it would be a good idea to try a slightly new visual approach. While the writing has always been my primary focus around here, I am a photographer after all, so it makes sense to attempt to create a more visually-appropriate layout. That said, I think the limiting factor is the platform I’m using. The provided tools are quite basic and will never be able to do the things I’d love to create without a significant time and money investment. It’s just not worth it for what it is (a space for me to mostly talk to myself). Acknowledging this fact has been a huge improvement for me personally, as I tend to be a perfectionist to a detrimental degree.
While last year was the year of needing other people; this year is shaping up to be the year of better allocating my time. Part of this approach will probably mean that the blog gets ignored from time to time. My aim is to keep the momentum going, however, my rigid approach of posting every single day has proven to be too big of a time cost to justify. Perhaps if I were making money from the blog or even attracting a modest-sized crowd, this wouldn’t be the case. But the reality is I’m typing these words largely for myself and a swarm of Chinese-based ai-training bots, so it’s realistically best to prioritize my time elsewhere. Again, this is not to say I’m abandoning ship. Instead, I hope to get more playful and experimental around here. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at fiction writing a bit more, so perhaps I will get to a bit of that this year.
Beyond this change, I also feel it makes sense to put more of a priority on the image (like the beautiful above image of junk on the lawn!).
One quick takeaway from running a daily photo blog for two years is that I don’t need to take as many photos as I have been. Obviously, if I’m enjoying it or doing it intentionally, that’s great; but sometimes I feel the urge to continually make images because I’m supposed to be doing so for blog content, which is not the right way to go about things. The result is that I end up with crazy amounts of images that then require my time to sift through, sort, and edit. This year, intentionality is priority. Better delegation of my time will result in not posting every day, while attempting to make each post serve a bit more purpose beyond my own mental needs.
-Clayton
This is one entry in a multi-part series of self-exploration and contemplation-out-loud in advance of the new calendar year. Some of this may happen; none of this may happen.
For the complete list of Year-End Contemplation posts from 2025, please see: 2025 12 25.
For the complete list of Year-End Contemplation posts from 2024, please see: 2024 12 25.
