It's that time of year again, everyone -- can you believe it's already been one year since our fifth anniversary?! Time has flown by in some regards; and in others, it has dragged on for way too long, haha. After what wound up happening in March of 2020 (right around the time our last anniversary post was published, as a matter of fact), I thought I would be quite wary to go through a month of March ever again, but as it turns out February of 2021 was difficult enough that I was actually looking forward to March's arrival, believe it or not!
Anyway, I digress, but there is a point to be made somewhere in there -- I know all of y'all have a lot of stuff going on in your lives, whether it's affected by the current state of the world, or just individual circumstances that you're dealing with. And I know that everyone needs a little time to cool off and get away from it all every now and again. I sincerely thank you for choosing to spend some of that time browsing my content. That means a lot to me.
Like you guys, publishing these blog posts and responding to your comments is part of the way I relieve stress sometimes, not to mention that obviously I'm just really into a lot of this stuff in general. But it wouldn't be sustainable for me to keep it up if I didn't get all of the wonderful interaction that you guys provide, which makes the whole activity worthwhile -- both here, and over at my flickr page. So, again, I appreciate you for stopping by!
2021 marks The Mid-South Retail Blog's sixth (!) year on the web, after a very productive mambo year number five, in which we broke 100,000 pageviews and got to celebrate with a very special post. We also wrapped up our long-running Rite Aid series, plowed forward with our ongoing Fred's series, and had a pretty healthy number of contributor posts -- which, by the way, I encourage you to continue sending in; our mailbox is at midsouthretailblog [at] gmail [dot] com. There's also one other really cool thing that I was invited to be a contributor to myself, which I'd like to share with y'all, except that it hasn't been made public just yet. I believe the crew is working on finishing it up. I'll be sure to share that here as soon as it's released. I'm very proud to be a part of that project, even if it is only a miniscule contribution.
Our pageviews as of today stand at 119,530, which is an increase of 25,487 off of last year's 94,043 -- about 8,060 more than our increase from 2019 to 2020, which is great to see. For you longtime readers and newcomers alike, I'm glad you keep finding it worth your time to come on back. If you'd like to revisit any of our posts from the past calendar year, you can find them all conveniently listed and linked below, and don't forget that all years' past content is always available from our sidebar as well.
January 2020
February 2020
March 2020
April 2020
May 2020
June 2020
July 2020
August 2020
September 2020
October 2020
November 2020
December 2020
Unfortunately, in regards to what I was saying earlier about enjoying writing for this blog in my free time -- I haven't really had much of that these past several weeks, as you may have noticed with the very short posts I published in February (although it is worth noting that this year does mark the first time I published more than one entry in February, so there's that, at least!). I expect that to continue for the next several weeks as well, so I apologize to any of you who may have been looking for more frequent content (trust me, I'd like to be writing more as well, but it is what it is).
All that said, this month is scheduled to have the next entry in our Fred's series, and naturally, the show must go on. So, please stay tuned in the next several days for a very special guest post kindly authored by a friend of the blog -- you won't want to miss it!! And of course, I hope to have plenty more fun content for you as soon as I'm able to get back in the groove as well. Again, thanks so much for your readership as well as your patience; and until next time, as always, have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!
Retail Retell
Congrats on the anniversary of the blog! There's been a lot of neat stuff posted during the past year and I'm sure there will be more neat stuff in the future. I started following this blog more frequently this year. For reasons I can't quite explain, I only read this blog infrequently in the past, but this is certainly a blog worth keeping an eye on with all the good content. I'm still getting caught up on older posts which I missed in the past.
ReplyDeleteJust in general, I must say there are many fine regional retail blogs out there on the Internet these days. I'm glad that the blog form is still alive. As a consequence of me reading the blogs more frequently, I must confess that I sometimes go a couple weeks without even checking out Flickr! Oh well, while there is still some great stuff on Flickr, I like the depth of content that is on the blogs.
Walgreens was one of the big blog topics over the past year and it was also one of the retailers making the oddest moves here in Texas. We've discussed Walgreens' downsized stores over the last several months. Well, I recently found out about the oddest downsizing yet! Maybe you saw this if you keep up with the Houston Historic Retail blog, but Mike there told me about this recent Walgreens downsized location in the small East Texas town of Jacksonville: https://goo.gl/maps/fXZyXLQYfv74KruK9
Yes, that's a Walgreens in the Box. Or a Jack in the Walgreens. I'll let you decide which makes more sense, lol, but it is a Walgreens in an old 1990s style Jack in the Box fast food restaurant. Jack in the Boxes of that vintage are small for fast food locations anyway. I can't imagine how small that store must be and they hardly did anything to remove the Jack in the Box look of the place! That's unbelievable, isn't it?!
Anyway, I'm looking forward to all the content that will be going up in the future. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! I appreciate your readership and comments, and glad you're getting some enjoyment out of my older posts as well. I'm sure all the other retail content providers on blogs and on flickr feel the same!
DeleteInteresting, thanks for that link! That is wild. I did see his recent Walgreens post but not the comment about the Walgreens-in-the-Box. Now, I'm not familiar with Jack-in-the-Box or their architecture, but regardless I can tell you that just looks weird for a Walgreens! These downsizings will be an interesting thing to watch over the coming years, it seems.
Congrats on achieving 6 years of writing for the MSRB! The blog has had a very productive year, that's for sure, and it sounds like you have some fun projects in the works too. As usual, I'm looking forward to see what adventures you have to share with us in the future! The last year has been a bit rough for many, but hopefully things only get better from here!
ReplyDeleteThank you, friend! I've got lots of good things planned for the blog, on top of a very busy and monumental year for me this year. We'll see how much I'm able to actually accomplish where the former is concerned, lol. Thanks as always for all your views, comments, and helping me with past (and very near-future...) blog projects.
DeleteI know you're still very busy, so I'll try to keep this short: congratulations on the six year MSRB anniversary! That project you were invited to contribute to sounds pretty interesting as well...
ReplyDeleteThank you, I appreciate it (and the brevity as well, haha!) Hopefully I'll get to share that project soon... it all depends on when they release it.
DeleteYou're welcome! And concerning the project: as someone once famously said - the waiting is the hardest part!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on 6 years! I completely agree with you about blogging and communicating with readers being a way to de-stress. Reading other blogs is also a great relaxation tool, and I love getting to see the unique photos that pop-up here. You're one of the few people representing the Mid-South area's retail and deserve credit for that alone, but you do so with a great level of care and detail. Here's to another 6 years!
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the kind words! That's very nice of you to say. I am excited to continue blogging and I look forward to everything you have in store for your great blog also!
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