{"id":1356,"date":"2018-10-26T21:12:17","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T04:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=1356"},"modified":"2018-10-26T21:19:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T04:19:31","slug":"ten-years-of-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/?p=1356","title":{"rendered":"Ten years of blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This month marks a decade of blogging on “Reidbord’s Reflections.” This is the 130th post. My posting frequency dropped precipitously over the years, from 20 posts in the first two months to one every couple of months now. I imagine I share with most bloggers a limited set of rehearsed topics, things I always wanted to write about. Once these were exhausted, new ideas came more slowly, often spurred by news articles. \u00a0Lately I’ve been more inclined to write about current events and news items, less about psychiatry. \u00a0I find people’s minds and ideas engaging. \u00a0As for the practice of psychiatry \u2014 tweaking this med or that, arguing over nuances of psychotherapy technique, weighing ethical goods like beneficence and autonomy \u2014 well, my interest waxes and wanes. \u00a0Psychiatry doesn’t change quickly, and as a result I feel little time pressure to write about anything particularly psychiatric.<\/p>\n

I don’t track my readership here, but I crosspost to a blog<\/a> on Psychology Today’s website, and they keep records. Far and away, my most read post there is “Countertransference, an overview<\/a>” with nearly 400,000 views. \u00a0It’s fairly well written in my humble opinion, but not especially so. \u00a0I can’t account for its outsized popularity. \u00a0Other favorites of mine, never mind their popularity, include the two-part posts\u00a0on<\/a> placebos<\/a>\u00a0and psychiatric<\/a> disability<\/a>; my ethics<\/a> piece on Pharma and doctors; my post on charging<\/a> patients for missed sessions (with a record 130+ comments); “Antidepressants are just a crutch<\/a>“; my sailing<\/a> analogy; whether therapists should accept gifts<\/a>; and my one attempt at fiction<\/a>. \u00a0Actually, there are more, but I’ll stop there at ten.<\/p>\n

Also, I was surprised to learn that my “Brief History of Psychiatry<\/a>,” a page deep in the website for my practice \u2014 not in my blog \u2014 is quite popular. \u00a0It’s often found by folks searching for… a brief history of psychiatry. \u00a0As it happens, roughly 50% more people search this phrase and go directly to that page on my site, than search for psychiatric services and go to my landing page.<\/p>\n

I somewhat regret naming my blog after myself. \u00a0If I’d known I’d be at it ten years later, I might have thought harder about a better name. \u00a0I envy the creative titles of some psychiatry blogs: Shrink Rap, Thought Broadcast, The Alienist, 1 Boring Old Man, The Last Psychiatrist. \u00a0Sadly, however, none of these are active anymore. \u00a0Dinah Miller shut down Shrink Rap<\/a> in August, Mickey Nardo (“1 Boring Old Man<\/a>“) died nearly two years ago, The Alienist<\/a> stopped posting in 2015, the anonymous Last Psychiatrist<\/a> went silent in 2014,\u00a0Thought Broadcast<\/a> in 2013. \u00a0Psych Practice<\/a> and Psycritic<\/a> haven’t posted for over half a year, either. \u00a0It’s nice to see George Dawson still posting long, thoughtful, frequent pieces on Real Psychiatry<\/a>, even if I sometimes disagree with his conclusions. \u00a0There are, of course, other psychiatry blogs I’m less (or not) familiar with.<\/p>\n

I was pleased that a content aggregator called Feedspot<\/a> ranked “Reidbord’s Reflections” number six out of the “top 50” psychiatry blogs and websites. \u00a0I don’t know how they decided this, but I thank them nonetheless. \u00a0I even added their badge to my blog several months ago. \u00a0I didn’t pay them or anything.<\/p>\n

The future of this blog? With the demise of Shrink Rap, a longtime favorite, it crossed my mind to shut down too. \u00a0 I realized early on<\/a> that the 1000-word cerebral essay isn’t ideal for blogging. \u00a0It’s not my style to post quickly and often, nor to repost cute cartoons and jokes from other sites. \u00a0By only occasionally posting anymore, I imagine that long ago I lost the regular readers I once had. \u00a0(I miss the dialog we sometimes had in the comments in the early years.) \u00a0I’ve thought about turning some of this writing into a book. \u00a0Or maybe try more seriously to publish op-eds in old-fashioned newspapers.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I’d feel bad to kill this creature I created. \u00a0On balance, I figure I’ll keep posting here as ideas occur to me. I enjoy writing (and crossword puzzles, and other wordplay). \u00a0As long as it’s fun there’s no reason to stop. \u00a0And you’re more than welcome to keep reading \u2014 and commenting, and even tossing me a writing-topic suggestion now and then. \u00a0It’s good to have you along.<\/p>\n

The photo is an iPhone calendar from 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month marks a decade of blogging on “Reidbord’s Reflections.” This is the 130th post. My posting frequency dropped precipitously over the years, from 20 posts in the first two months to one every couple of months now. I imagine I share with most bloggers a limited set of rehearsed topics, things I always wanted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[70,32],"class_list":["post-1356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative","tag-current-events","tag-psychology-today","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1356"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1379,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1356\/revisions\/1379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.stevenreidbordmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}