Compiling a Bucket List [Pt 3]

Planning for my end game...

This upcoming week marks the ninth anniversary of this blog, according to the date attached to my very first post. (The actual launch date — which I don't have any record of — is sometime in December.) Making it to year ten would be a good time to decide whether this blogging journey is ready to be over.

One of the things that I haven't yet thought about re: the end of that journey is how to step aside without having to continue the admin stuff.

A large part of what I mean is ensuring that the blog doesn't become a target for spammers. I've seen abandoned blogs that have become a virtual home for squatters, where the owner has not replied to legitimate comments, has not deleted obvious spam and unrelated marketing messages, and has not done as little as turning off all commenting to avoid the problem in the first place.

When I call it quits, I want the message to be clear that I don't have plans to return. While nothing would stop me from posting in future, I wouldn't want that possibility to be an expectation or even a likelihood. I'd want to say my goodbyes and thank yous and make a clean break... when the time comes.

Then there is my little pattern shop. Do I send all of my patterns off to Makerist so that I don't have to handle individual sales manually? So many things to consider.

Because the online world is so unpredictable, I constantly wonder what would happen if Blogger were to become a paid platform. If this were to happen right now — while I'm still actively blogging — it would suck and I'd have to make some hard decisions. But if it were to happen a year or two down the line when I may not longer be adding to it, how else might I keep all of "this" available to one and all?

---

---

About five years ago, I started a Word document with a custom style sheet template and began transferring the content of my blog posts into it. This is as far as I got:

This is my blog post from March 8, 2014...

March of 2014 is barely five months in from the birth of this blog. Don't know if you can see it, but that's already page 52. So yes, I realized five years ago that this was going to take a real committed effort.

Therefore, I stopped. (－‸ლ)

I know, but can you blame me? Doing the transformation seemed too much like work — as in, the real work that I used to get paid for — so it invariably took a back seat to the sewing that I was more enthused about at the time.

My very first blog post printed out...

But present day me is looking at this project differently. Although with each passing week, potentially three or four more pages would need to be added to this document — meaning I'm seriously falling behind — I feel a renewed spark within me to tackle this.

---

Watch live classes for FREE at CreativeLive! [affiliate link]

---

With that in mind, since this I have this series of posts about compiling a bucket list, I thought, why not add this item to it? If it gets done, it'll be a feather in my cap, if not, it likely won't be a big deal, since it really has nothing to do with sewing.

The basic idea, of course, is to turn the document into a PDF once it's all put together. For those of you thinking that this work can be done automatically via some means, you would be correct. There is in fact a site called BlogBooker that will take a entire blog and turn it into a PDF.

It evens lets you try it out, albeit with low res images. Here is a sample page (my post from April 17, 2021):

Sample output from BlogBooker...

I probably don't have to tell you that I like my own version better. As a former document designer, I would cringe if I had to live with the output shown above. Let me clarify, however, by saying that if my goal was merely to keep a readable backup, it would be fine and dandy.

BlogBooker also offers paid versions (of course), but I cannot see any indication that it would use the original blog's theme (background) or allow a different one to be put in place for the purposes of jazzing up the final document.

So, not an option for me.

I recently came across a site that will print an actual (soft or hard covered) physical book with custom layout. Pricing for an 8.5" x 11" softcover volume of 700 pages — that's the upper limit; I have no idea what I would end up with in terms of number of pages — would be $182 USD, shipping not included. Kinda pricy, but as a keepsake for ten years of work, is it unreasonable?

---

Get ONE YEAR of crafty classes at Creativebug for ZERO NET COST... ends Oct 31!  [affiliate link]

---

I also thought of the idea of pulling out just the posts that contain tutorials and bundling them into a PDF for distribution. Who knows, it might make a nice farewell gift for my regular readers.

All things considered, there is one potential hiccup to overcome: document size. My ideal final result would be to have one single PDF for the entire blog, encompassing however many years it turns out to run.

The one year sample PDF from BlogBooker is about 14MB, and my current Word doc with just five months worth of (weekly) posts converts to just under 4MB. If I wind up with a ten year old blog, that could mean a rather large PDF. Right now, the largest PDF pattern I sell is the MyTie; it's 59 pages and weighs in at 7.8MB.

It could be a considerable challenge to overcome, which is one of the main reasons why I've left it for so long. But that's okay: a bucket list is essentially a wish list, not a "to do" list.

Ultimately, it'll get done if I decide that it's worth the effort.

'Til next...