It's been about 7 1/2 months since I started blogging daily. I've only missed a handful of days in that time -- mostly around the holidays.

This morning, I got to wondering how many of the posts I've written have been Blog Riffs, and how many have been "original".

Here are some stats:

Month Blog Riffs "Original" Posts
September 9 81.82% 2 18.18%
October 12 57.14% 9 42.86%
November 11 57.89% 8 42.11%
December 8 42.11% 11 57.89%
January 11 50.00% 11 50.00%
February 11 61.11% 7 38.89%
March 13 56.52% 10 43.48%
April 8 47.06% 9 52.94%
Total 83 55.33% 67 44.67%

 

There were a few surprises for me in these numbers.

First, I would have guessed that the percentage of Blog Riffs had dropped more over time. Since Blog Riffing helped jump start my daily blogging, it's been easier for me to come up with original blog posts too. Perhaps if I hadn't done a week of book reviews in October, there'd be a clear decrease in Riffs for last year, but this year, they're back up and going strong.

Second, several times as I was checking which posts were original and which were Riffs, I found myself looking at the headline and thinking, "oh yeah, I remember that one. It was a good one. It was original." But when I clicked through to double-check, sure enough, there was a quote from somebody else's blog.

Maybe that means I've got a really big head, and I think all the best ideas come from within. Since I'm disinclined to believe that :-), the lesson I got from it is that Blog Riffs are just as original as so-called "original" content. (If they're not, I'd call them either "thick curation" or "thin curation").

Either way, it's clear that Blog Riffing has been absolutely indispensable in helping me achieve my goal of blogging daily. So here's a shout out to all the people who's posts have inspired mine for over half a year. Thank you!