2018—The Year of the Mule
As 2018 begins, I thought it would be good to set some goals and expectations for what happens here on the Mule over the course of the next 12 months. Last year was my first year of blogging about whisky, beer, or anything else here, and when I first began, I really didn’t know where I was heading with this website. If you read my very first post, it’s pretty clear that I didn’t specifically set out to create a whisky blog, yet that’s what happened. Although early on I spent as much time writing about politics as I did brown spirits, by the end of 2017, whisky had become my main focus. I quickly realized it’s more fun and rewarding to write about what I know and what I like, and that’s whisky (and beer).
So let’s set out some specific goals for MeadeMule.com in 2018.
- More whisky content (in addition to reviews). The vast majority of my posts in 2017 were whisky reviews. In 2018, I want to expand my whisky content with general opinion articles and thoughts about whisky, in addition to reviews. I have several such articles drafted that I’ve been working on, and ideas for several more, but I haven’t actually published much on this front. That will change soon.
- Keep the whisky reviews coming. I was pretty consistent about publishing at least one whisky review per week in 2017. That will continue in 2018.
- Get back to writing about beer. Early on, I wrote nearly as many beer reviews as whisky reviews. I got away from that in part because I haven’t received much traffic for my beer reviews. It seems like most people who are interested in beer reviews stick to the major review outlets like BeerAdvocate, RateBeer, and Untappd, and stop there. Which makes sense. Buying beer is a much smaller investment than a bottle of whisky (usually), so consumers don’t spend as much time reading reviews of a prospective purchase. So instead of spending a lot of time writing beer reviews that only a small handful of people will ever read, I’m going to try to write more general opinion pieces about beer. And maybe do some interview with folks in the beer industry. Which brings me to…
- Interviews. I’ve been toying with the idea of interviewing a variety of people in the beverage industries, be it breweries, distilleries, store owners, fellow reviewers, etc. I don’t have much of any real experience doing interviews, so it will be a learning experience for me. I’m excited about the idea though.
- More Ramblings of the Mule. It’s been several months since I posted a new volume of Ramblings of the Mule, and that needs to change. It’s one of my favorite things to write, which is to say I enjoy writing whatever random thoughts come to my mind. Volume 4 will be coming soon, and more volumes will hopefully follow.
- More YouTube videos. I started a YouTube channel back in September, but have only posted two videos. I’ve been wanting to record more, but, well, I’ve been lazy. And in my defense, writing reviews and other online content is time-consuming enough, making additional time for videos is not easy. I’m hoping that once I’ve done a few more I’ll get better at being able to churn out short videos that don’t demand too much of my time while still providing good content. We’ll see.
- More cocktails. I posted my first cocktail recipe in December, with the promise of more to come. Although I’m not going to go too deep into cocktails here, I do plan to share a few more.
2017 was an interesting year. I’ve seen a lot of people complain about 2017 and welcome its end with a sigh of relief, usually due to their disapproval of the president, the government, the news, or something similar (on all sides of the political spectrum). But me? I rather enjoyed 2017, in large part because of what I’ve been able to do here on the Mule. Yes, I’m no fan of the president. And there are many things about this country that annoy me or just flat out piss me off… mass marketing, corporate greed, Facebook, Scott Adams, the Dallas Cowboys, AB InBev, Congress, political correctness, science deniers, Steve Bannon, etc. But I refuse to let the quality of our government and related matters define the quality of my life. I’ll let the whisky (and beer) do that. ?
So yes, 2017 wasn’t so bad. Here’s to hoping 2018 will be even better, with plenty of good whisky. Sláinte!
