When you blog every day, it is best not to think about the totality of your output. Take it from me, someone who has been doing this in one form or another for longer than I'd prefer to disclose, and who knows how to follow his own advice: When you write a certain number of words almost every day for (oh, let's say) eight years, considering the sheer number of words involved -- or how many books you could have put those words into -- can be a tad bit depressing. In my experience, it's best to put your head down and keep writing, because a) it's really fun, b) existential crisis leads to writer's block, which is best fought by constant writing and c) who reads books, anyway? Pshh. Books.
Former Michigan reserve Josh Bartelstein has found a third way.
Bartlestein began logging his experiences for the Wolverines' athletics website as a Michigan walk-on after his freshman (2009-10) season, back when the Wolverines were a sub-.500 rebuilding entity still finding their feet in the John Beilein era. What began as a lark (as so many of the best blogs do) rapidly turned into a minor calling. Bartelstein's thoughtful insights into his own team, written from someone actually on the team, were frequently fascinating.
In the meantime, Beilein built the Wolverines into a Big Ten champ and then a national title contender (and eventual runner-up), and Bartelstein kept up the blog posts throughout. Bartelstein was robbed of a conventional storybook ending, but his final entry -- titled "The Final Entry" -- put a fitting coda on a solid few years of blog work. A salute was most certainly in order.
But Bartelstein has figured out a way to not only archive all that great work, but make a little coin from it, too. As MLive.com's Nick Baumgardner reported Monday evening, Bartelstein is collecting his popular blog posts into a self-published eBook available for purchase at BlogIntoBook.com. This is a really handy idea. Not only does the blog get a definitive long-term home, Bartelstein can (hopefully) make a little scratch for his efforts, now that he's not a student-athlete forced to prime the content pumps for his school's website for free. For Michigan fans, this is a must-read. For everyone else, consider it a donation to one of the best chroniclers of Michigan's resurrection -- a guy who happened to be in the locker room the entire time to boot.
At the very least, consider this your chance to clear the karmic ledger for the time you bought all those other horrible Tumblr books at Urban Outfitters. You people know who you are.