A Hundred Posts, Two Extra, and a New Beginning Ludos

On July 12, 2025, I decided to upgrade my blog.
The original goal was fairly practical. I wanted to organize my writing better, improve how readers could navigate the website, and create a more permanent home for the essays, stories, notes, and ideas I had accumulated over the years.
Then, somewhere in the middle of reorganizing categories and moving things around, I made a considerably less practical decision.
I was going to publish 100 posts in one year.
The mathematics seemed simple enough. One hundred posts over fifty-two weeks meant publishing approximately two posts every week. It sounded ambitious but manageable, which is usually how unreasonable commitments introduce themselves.
This week, I looked back at what I had published during the year.
The final count was 102 posts.
I missed publishing during two of the fifty-two weeks. Apparently, I compensated for those gaps by publishing more during several others. The schedule was not perfectly consistent, but the outcome exceeded the goal.
For someone who began with a round number and an approximate plan, 102 feels like an appropriately untidy success.

Rediscovering Twenty-Five Years of Notes
The past year was not only about producing new material. It was also about rediscovering old ideas.
Over the last twenty-five years, I have written constantly, although much of that writing never appeared publicly. Thoughts were scattered across notebooks, computer folders, emails, documents, unfinished drafts, presentation notes, and files whose names made perfect sense when I created them but became increasingly mysterious with time.

Some were only fragments. Others were nearly complete essays waiting for attention. Many were observations I had written down because I thought they might become useful someday.
Over the past year, “someday” finally arrived.

I collected these notes, reread them, reorganized them, and used them as starting points for new posts. Some ideas had aged well. Others required considerable renovation. A few made me wonder what exactly I had been thinking at the time.
Together, however, they became a map of the subjects that have interested me throughout my life.
That map turned out to cover a great deal of territory.

I wrote about history and culture. I explored mythology, astronomy, science fiction, fantasy, literature, comics, leadership, personal growth, corporate life, and the strange vocabulary organizations invent to make ordinary ideas sound revolutionary.
I wrote about Middle-earth, books, dragons, mentors, villains, stars, legends, and workplace rituals.
There was no single theme connecting everything, except perhaps curiosity.

The Posts Readers Connected With
One of the most rewarding parts of the year was discovering which subjects resonated with readers.

The series where mythology meets astronomy became the most popular. These essays explore how ancient stories continue to echo in the planets, constellations, and celestial objects named after gods, heroes, monsters, and legends.

There is something compelling about looking at the night sky and realizing that humanity has been placing stories among the stars for thousands of years.
The growth mindset essays received some of the most thoughtful comments, particularly the pieces about mentors and the people who shape our lives.
The essay about the life cycle of buzzwords also generated considerable discussion. Perhaps everyone has encountered a word that began as a useful idea, became fashionable, appeared in every presentation, and eventually lost all identifiable meaning.
Meanwhile, The Five Stages of Onboarding became one of the most visited posts on the website.

That probably says something about corporate life.
I am not sure it says anything encouraging.

The Writing That Remains Unpublished
Despite publishing 102 posts, I also wrote a surprising amount that has not yet appeared on the blog.
Yes, apparently publishing more than one hundred pieces was not enough to empty the cupboard.
Among the unpublished work is a comprehensive thirteen-part guide to reading Brandon Sanderson, intended to help readers navigate his novels, worlds, series, and interconnected universe.
I also wrote a five-part series on Hari Singh Nalwa, the legendary general who served under Maharaja Ranjit Singh and played a central role in expanding and defending the Sikh Empire.
I have an eight-part series on phobias. Yes, you read that right. I have collected all the words that deal with phobias.

All these series require additional editing and refinement before publication, but the foundations are complete.
There are also several pieces of humor waiting in the drafts folder.
Some of them may not be regarded as humorous by the people who inspired them.
That is one of the occupational hazards of writing satire. The writer notices patterns. The subjects recognize themselves.

For now, those essays remain safely unpublished. Mostly.

Building Critical Mass
When I began this challenge, the goal was numerical: one hundred posts in one year.
But the real achievement was not the number.
The real achievement was building a body of work.
A single essay can disappear quickly into the endless flow of online content. A collection begins to establish a voice. Over time, the posts start connecting with one another. Themes emerge. Series develop. An archive becomes a library.

After 102 posts, the blog now has what I would call critical mass.
A new reader can arrive through an essay about mythology and discover something about leadership. Someone reading about corporate buzzwords may wander into Middle-earth. A history enthusiast may encounter an essay about astronomy. A fantasy reader may unexpectedly find a reflection on mentorship.
That is how I have always read, and it is increasingly how I write: moving from one subject to another, following connections that are not always obvious at first.
The past year gave those interests a shared home.
More importantly, it reminded me that writing is not only about producing something new. It is also about returning to old questions with new experiences.
The person reading my twenty-year-old notes is not the same person who wrote them.
That distance creates perspective.

Introducing Ludos
To celebrate this milestone, I am adding a new section to the blog.
It is called Ludos, derived from the Latin word ludus, associated with games, play, sport, and training.
This section will explore games in their many forms: board games, video games, role-playing games, game worlds, storytelling, strategy, characters, and the ideas hidden beneath the act of play.
Games are often dismissed as simple entertainment. But the best games are systems of imagination. They ask us to make decisions, understand rules, cooperate with others, take risks, solve problems, and temporarily become someone else.

The first Ludos series will grow out of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I am playing with friends.

As part of preparing for the campaign, I created the background story of my character, Alaric Noctis.
Alaric is not merely a collection of abilities and statistics on a character sheet. He has a history, a set of beliefs, a burden he carries, and choices that brought him to the beginning of the campaign.
I will publish his story as a series, followed by occasional campaign notes as his journey unfolds.
Role-playing games create a particularly interesting form of storytelling. The writer does not control the entire plot. The story develops through collaboration, improvisation, dice rolls, unexpected decisions, and the occasional disastrous plan that seemed excellent when the party first discussed it.
I know where Alaric’s story begins.
I do not yet know where it will end.
That is part of the fun.

What Comes Next
The one-hundred-post challenge is complete.
That also means I am retiring the twice-a-week publishing schedule.
Going forward, there may be weeks with no new posts. There may also be weeks with two, three, or even four. The rhythm will be less predictable and, hopefully, more natural.
I do not want the calendar to become more important than the writing.

Some ideas need time. Some stories arrive almost fully formed. Others require research, revision, reflection, and the willingness to admit that the first version was not nearly as brilliant as it appeared at midnight.
The publishing schedule may change, but the writing will continue.
There are still unpublished essays waiting to be revised, unfinished series waiting to be completed, old notes waiting to be rediscovered, and entirely new subjects waiting around the corner.

A year ago, I set myself a target of one hundred posts.
I finished with 102.

More importantly, I finished with a stronger blog, a substantial archive, several new series, and a renewed appreciation for the strange and rewarding journey from an idea to a finished piece of writing.
It has been fun.
Now it is time to roll the dice and begin the next chapter.

Read what speaks to you. Stay as long as you’d like.
And if something lingers after you leave, then it’s done what it was meant to do.

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