This website’s origins are fairly humble. Cofounder Jason Siegel, on a trip to visit D.C., came over to the Rhode Island Avenue apartment Bullets and I cohabited at the time. Our sans-agenda hang-out ultimately meandered its way to grandiose dreams about how amazing it would be for our 6-bro squad to start a blog. Impulsiveness took over and the titular Bobcat Territory – a clique-defining inside joke that sounded like a domain name – was purchased.
Our original aspirations, on the other hand, were far from humble. We prescribed roles each of us would play in managing the site. We laid out tactics to maximize our reach, deliberated on copyright infringement, and defined our target readership demographic. If you think this sounds overly-robust, it pales in comparison content calendar we were planned: each of us contributing at least one post of any length (i.e., short) each week, capped by a feature-length piece each week written by one of us on a rotating basis.
That’s totally doable, we said to each other. Lolllllllll
That aggressive schedule fell off pretty quickly, and that’s, in hind sight, a real no brainer. It’s also completely fine. This post isn’t an overarching referendum on our naivety, or whether this site of ours has been successful. Actually, regardless of what other people may think, I feel pretty confident in asserting the site, as a whole, has been successful. And one of the reasons we’ve been able to pull this off, to the degree that we have, is what this blog is about: The Streak.
Scanning our archives on the right sidebar of this screen will allow you to click-through to our original post – April 2oth (amazing!) 2012. Roughly 6.5 years ago. Actually, 81 months ago, is maybe a better way to put it – not because it’s more precise, but because it’s a more meaningful way to measure this website’s lifespan. Because in each of those 81 individual months, from April 2012 up until now, at least one piece of content has been published.
Sometimes – alright, basically EVERY time – we get one in juuuust under the wire, posting on the second-to or last day of the month. If I had to hazard a guess, 80% of our posts are stamped on the 28th or later. No matter. For coming up on 7 years, we’ve yet to miss a single freaking month.
Here’s where I could write about what an impressive feat that is, considering responsibilities, packed schedules, changing lives and priorities, etc. And maybe, too, I could wax on a bit about just how different our lives look now than they did back then – Crouse moved to Texas, I begat a child, Trump became President, Ezra changed his hair style 395 different times, etc.
All that is true, but it’s really not the matter at hand. Instead, it’s how this trend – which didn’t start as intentional, but was instead noticed in one of those “hey! look at that!” sort of ways – has eventually turned into the primary driving force keeping this website going- if you will, an IV drip keeping Bobcat Territory on life support (well, maybe something not quite as dire – pong analysis still needs to be posted somewhere, after all!).
The Streak, in itself, has done this because we care about it. Most months, with less than a week to spare, a text will go out, hoping that one of us has some organic spark of an idea, or at least is willing to churn one out on willpower alone. Whichever it is, The Streak is what’s prompting that text. It’s what’s prompting posts to get written. Frankly, it’s what’s prompting THIS post to get written.
So meta.
None of us have ever really discussed why The Streak matters to us. On the surface level, it seems more gimmicky than anything else. But I think we all have some basic understanding that if The Streak lapses, so too will the website. And Bobcat Territory is just not something we want to let go.
Why is that, though? There are other forums (fora?) through which we could express ourselves, no?
Perhaps it’s just a better format than social media for long-form expression. Maybe it allows me to get on my high horse; I can say I have a real blog with intellectual aspirations, and hold myself in higher esteem. Or possibly, I still pine for the idyllic days of youth when all six of us founders lived together, were incessantly connected, and could find nirvana among each other in the woods.
I’m not entirely sure, and I certainly don’t want to reach the word count that fully unpacking it would require.
The point is, at least to us select few, this site DOES matter. This Streak matters.
Let’s keep it going.
The Streak is (not) dead! Long live The Streak!