Category Archives: Places to Eat

Check Your Draft Blog Posts First

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Today when looking at my drafts to see if there was an old post, I could edit, update, etc., and then post. Because like others, I have old posts I got most of the way there and then never posted them or forgot about them.

When I got near the end of the list of drafts, I found a post about “Progress About ‘Places to Eat’ Web Application” (future posts). I already had old content about the 10K Apart contest and places to eat that I recommend. Along with starting a newsletter, etc., that I ended up writing called “Looking to Start a Newsletter of Places to Eat.” The old one had much more detail.

The old one needed a bit of finishing/updating and was almost 1,300 words. So I broke it into two posts for now that I can use later. Since I recently talked about these subjects. It will be better to post them after doing some research on starting a newsletter platform to use. Or at least which one to use when first starting.

Look at Your Old Posts First

So please look at all your drafts before starting a new blog post. You might even want to read some of them to see if the content is similar to what you wanted to talk about that day.

Here’s to finishing up old blog posts and getting them out in the world or deleting ones you don’t want anymore.

Looking to Start a Newsletter of Places to Eat

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I’m thinking of starting a newsletter about places to eat when people travel. That is when it’s safe to d so again. But I can give you an idea of restaurants to go to that I recommend.

I think it was over two years ago I set up a MailChimp newsletter related to places to eat when traveling. So I need to look for that information again and see if that is still valid. In the meantime, I need to start working on a few drafts of places to eat.

At some point, I need to check that the places I love to go to are still open after the pandemic.

I think I would send the newsletter out once every two weeks to start. They would have five or six places to eat in one city or state.

Ideas for Newsletters

Each newsletter would include a place to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They would also include somewhere to go in for a coffee, tea, etc., to get work done or relax. Along with a place for an afternoon snack or a beverage, and then a place for a late-night meal.

Some of the newsletters might have more of one type of place or another if I cannot decide which place to add.

For the larger cities, there might be many newsletters because I have found so many places to go in that city.

It won’t all be larger cities. There will be ones on places like Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse, NY, or Joshua Tree, CA, Akron or Columbus, OH, or Jackson, MS, Annapolis or Frederick or Grasonville, MD., etc.

Multiple Newsletters for Larger Cities

Some of those cities would be New York City, Washington, DC, Portland, OR, Seattle, Los Angles, San Diego, etc. I have so many places in those cities to suggest that I would recommend.

So for those cities, I would showcase places in a particular neighborhood. So that way you can walk to all the restaurants if you want and spend a day getting to know an area of that city.

Newsletter about a Given Food Type

Other newsletters might be on a specific topic. Such as places for Ramen, pizza, hamburgers, ice cream, Chinese food. Or maybe whole in the wall places, BBQ, vegetarian/vegan, etc.

Are You Interested?

Please leave a comment if you’re interested in signing up for an e-mail related to places I recommend. If so, I will notify you once you can sign up for the newsletter.

Or ones that might be in your home town that you suggest I go to at some point.

Enjoying the Extra Writing

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Since I started blogging again this year, I have noticed I’m enjoying the writing part. Keeping a daily schedule has been good and bad.

My Process

I have spent time first coming up with blog post ideas and then outlining them. Once I have done an outline or two, I start putting in a bit of the content as the first draft. Then on my walk’s I tend to work through ideas and figure out what I want to say. It’s been helpful getting the thoughts down in my head before typing them in blog posts.

Keeping the posts between a couple of hundred words and maybe 500 or 600 words has been helpful. My old style was to write long posts of a thousand to fifteen hundred words with code examples, etc. Doing these took many hours, a few days, or even weeks.

I still need to finish a few of the longer blog posts I started a year or more ago and get them out at some point. But right now, I’m working on writing every day and putting something new out.

Posting Every Day so Far this Year

It’s been interesting attempting to make sure to post everyday. The issue is more what else do I have or need to say at a given time.

Posting every day so far in January, it’s been nice to talk about what was happening on a given day. Or to recap what happened on a given day. Like the weekend lazy Saturday post a while ago or on Thursdays about Wednesday’s Inauguration.

So here’s to seeing how long I can keep writing/posting every day.

Might Slow Up on Posts

I’m not sure if I want to keep it up because of the time it has been taking. I think I could use the time to learn more modern CSS and JavaScript to help look for a front-end coding job.

Between outlining posts, thinking what I want to say, and writing the first draft of posts. Then coming back to posts to edit/finish them and then one last check before posting takes time. Even these shorter style posts are taking anywhere from an hour to three hours.

Or it might be a mix of code learning and blog posts, with some of them being about what I have learned.

Other Activities

I also need to keep time for my 100 Day Project wine bottle shape drawings or adding restaurants to Gotta Eat Here. Doing so helps for when it’s safe to travel. I want to have plenty of places to eat when I’m away.

I want to add some features like a map of all the places for a given location on a separate page. Doing it this way as not to slow up the downloading of the main list of restaurants. The maps feature needs more research for the best way to add them without cost to me.

I would like to make the website a progressive web application, too, at some point.

Doing All the Things

So here’s to making time to both write, learn to code, etc., while still getting time to relax too.