Yep, it’s taken a while but I really have now hit 1000 posts on the WordPress edition of the Musings. This is, I have to admit, not much of a spectacular way to celebrate but I’m still proud. I’ve produced really quite a body of work on here, of course generously bolstered by numerous guest posts, art interviews and donations of time, photographs or even just permission for me to talk about certain subjects or show off fossils.
The site is, I hope (and the stats and comments suggest this is true) is not just about my Musings on palaeontology, science communication, my research and bits of news and oddities like the zoo reviews. Instead I hope that, as a whole, it has built up an archive of things that are and will for a long time, be useful to students and others trying to build their interest and knowledge in palaeontology and science in general.
When I first started blogging (more than 4 years ago now) I don’t think I came into it with much more motivation than having a few moments to spare and thinking I could actually contribute some of my knowledge, experience and perspective to the pool of information that is the web. I’m not sure that motivation has ever strayed far and while my back catalogue has grown, and I’ve had to diversify on occasion, the only core ‘ideal’ I’ve had (if you can call it that) was to simply talk science and palaeo and how it fits into the academic world and with the general public. The Musings would be about actual research and it’s interactions with the world and while there would be personality (I’m writing it) there would not be much ‘me’ there to see – aside from my digital voice, there’s not much of me on here.
Well that’s it for now. I genuinely have no idea how much longer this will keep going. I must confess that I’ve come very close to quitting a couple of times and while I’m certainly not going to bow out just yet, yet alone because I’ve reached an arbitrary milestone, I do wonder if I’ll be doing this some 4 further years down the line. For all the frustrations and difficulties I have, overall, enjoyed this a lot. I can only hope it’s brought a decent amount of pleasure and knowledge to the readers.
Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings 
Thanks for your efforts!
I hope you keep doing this for a long, long time. It’s one of my favorite blogs. I was reading it long before I finally made a WordPress account to be able to comment. Thank you for all your time and work. It’s appreciated, especially by a layman who loves the field and has trouble with reading the source papers.
You can make it more about your research if that would be a motivation to keep going. My blog is first about my own research and promoting it as well as news I find interesting and discussions of papers I’m reading for my research. But the original motivation was finding a way to give some more background and commentary on my research papers with at least some of that commentary accessible to a wider public.
A thousand posts is quite an achievement. The Musings is one of the bench mark blogs in the palaeoworld and sets standards for myself and others to aspire to. I hope you stick around for a good while yet Dave – even if it is in some form of reduced capacity in the future.
I am fairly new to bolgs but i really like this one. Its kept me in the loop as i cant go back to school right now to get towards my degree in Paleontology. 🙂
Just keep doing what you do Dave. It’s the reason why I love reading your blog so much.
Congrats on your kilopost. Yours is def one of my favourite blogs on any subject although it could do with more pictures of sauropod vertebrae.
Congratulations, and keep it coming! Even for a total layman as myself it is quite understandable, and enjoyable.