#358, Ottava Via of Detroit, a Blog Year Five visit
You guys! I am FINALLY doing a review post for Blog Year Five of 100 Places in the D, which ran from February 8, 2018 through February 7, 2019.
To say I got behind on the blog this year is an understatement; what is more accurate to say is that I took an unplanned five-and-a-half-month break. To be honest, I was feeling pretty burnt out on blogging last year, and after going on a two-week vacation this past January, I found the prospect of delving back into it challenging, especially with all of the other to-dos I had swirling around in my brain. So I just . . . didn’t.
Days of inactivity turned into weeks turned into months – until I finally tired of feeling plagued by the bigger and bigger backlog of posts and impulsively logged on one afternoon last month to pen the piece on this past December’s Pewabic Pottery visit.
So I’m back in the blogging saddle again, refreshed by my unplanned break and working, slowly but surely, to catch 100 Places in the D up to the present-day, however long it takes me! Because despite not posting on the blog for over half a year, I was still out there making visits to awesome locally-owned, new-to-me establishments in the tri-country Metro-Detroit area (an obsession that I never see myself burning out on!).
At the end of every blogging year in 100 Places in the D’s history, I’ve done a year-in-review post, to state whether I’ve achieved the goal(s) I set for myself for the year, to declare my goal(s) for the next blogging year, and to share some stats I find fun.
I only had one goal for Blog Year Five, but it was a big one: to visit 50 new-to-me, locally-owned establishments in the city of Detroit alone. And I did it!!!!!!
I’m super proud of this accomplishment because while I LOVE going down to the city, I often feel resistance around the driving-down-there-and-parking part. Having this 50-visits-in-Detroit goal to keep me accountable helped make visits less of a daydream and more of a planned-out reality. And you know I loved trying those oodles of new-to-me places in the D!
The goal I’ve set for Blog Year Six (which is already almost halfway over!) is the same: to again visit 50 new-to-me places in the city of Detroit alone. I’ve currently got some catching up to do on this goal to be on pace with achieving it by early February of next year; I’ve only done 14 visits in the city so far when I should have done around 22. But I’m optimistic that by being majorly intentional for the rest of the year, I can do it – and I look forward to having an excuse to spend ample time in the D this summer, fall, and winter!
I’ll close out this post with some stats about the visits I made to new-to-me, locally-owned establishments during Blog Year Five – in case any readers enjoy nerding out on such numbers as much as I do. 🙂
Number of places visited in Blog Year Five: 86
Number of cities visited: 21
Breakdown by county: Macomb: 14; Oakland: 17; Wayne: 55
Breakdown by city:
Detroit: 50
Sterling Heights: 5
Ferndale: 4
Clinton Township: 3
Saint Clair Shores: 3
Grosse Pointe Woods: 2
Hamtramck: 2
Mount Clemens: 2
Troy: 2
Waterford: 2
Berkley: 1
Birmingham: 1
Bloomfield: 1
Bloomfield Hills: 1
Chesterfield: 1
Dearborn: 1
Hazel Park: 1
Rochester: 1
Rochester Hills: 1
Royal Oak: 1
West Bloomfield: 1
My next post will showcase my top-ten favorite places that I visited during Blog Year Five, so look out for that to appear soon!
100 Places in the D 