Sometimes You Don't Know What You've Done Until You've Done It

On balance, I was quite pleased with the way my Advent Calendar project went. Given that I came up with it on a whim and did little more to prepare for what it would look like than bookmark a website offering copyright free images, the results seemed about as solid as might have been expected. 

The fun part, naturally, was trawling through YouTube for possible entries, something I spent numerous hours doing throughout the month. I also did some "research" outside of YouTube, by which I mostly mean flipping through a number of lists of odd, bizarre, weird or unusual Christmas songs other people had compiled. Seems like a lot of people had that idea.

I felt a tad uncomfortable about cribbing from other people's work, though, so most of the examples of the form I found there didn't get used, even if some of them were pretty amusing. I also tried to second-guess how familiar the songs would be to others, not just whether they were new to me. I had, for example, never heard Don't Shoot Me, Santa by The Killers before but I bet almost everyone else has, so it didn't get used.

The idea was to stay away from the really obvious ones. I also tried to avoid any I'd already included in posts from previous years. All of that meant some numbers I'd have otherwise liked to include got left on the cutting-room floor.

Most of these rules developed organically as I was putting the posts together. It took a while for the project to find its shape. To begin with, everything was so ad hoc and disorganised, it was several days before it occurred to me I ought at least be trying to match the image with the song in some fashion. Once I started doing that, it became by far the most time-consuming part of the whole process and something I felt well worth spending time on, even though I very much doubt most people would have noticed the difference.

Of course, how many people even glanced at the calendar day-by-day is an unknowable. Blogger keeps records of this sort of thing but the statistics are largely meaningless. Looking back at the record, every day in December is much of a muchness, with the notable exceptions of the 21st, 22nd and 23d, when for no discernable reason page views spike tenfold. 

Comments generally provide a much more meaningful indicator of engagement. I was both pleased and surprised to receive responses to many of the calendar entries over the course of the month, something that might have read as a solid endorsement of the project, had not every one of them come from the same person. At least I know Redbeard enjoyed it.

So did I. From my perspective it was definitely a success. I had fun doing and it certainly boosted my post count, never a bad thing. It also meant I was able to take several extra days off during the busiest time of the year and still have something to post every morning. 

Whether I'll want to do it again next year I'm not quite sure. There's certainly no shortage of Christmas songs to choose from - there must be thousands. I already have a couple of weeks' worth banked that I didn't have space for this year. I added a couple more just doing this post...

If I do run the feature again next time, though, I think I'll have to tweak the format a little. The thing I found by far the most frustrating was not being able to comment on any of the songs as I posted them. It felt very unnatural just to put the videos up without context or commentary. I wouldn't do it that way again.

Luckily, thanks to Redbeard, I was able to get some of that pent-up frustration out of my system in the comments. Even so, I was very tempted to go back over the entire two-dozen entries here in today's post, adding my thoughts and showing my workings.

Sanity has prevailed, as I'm sure anyone still readiing this will be relieved to hear. I'll just suck it up and keep my pithy observations and snarky wit to myself. The Christmas snow has fallen. Let it lie.

What the whole thing has demonstrated, once again, is the value of running tightly-focused series of posts based on a clear, uncluttered premise. So far, every time I've done this it's been about music but there's no reason the principle can't be extended to other subjects or topics. I'll be giving that some thought in the New Year. 

I should also bookmark this for my advice to new bloggers post come Blaugust. You can place your bets now as to whether I remember.