That's a lot of words

To celebrate President’s Day 2024, I decided to forgo the usual fireworks, gift-giving and ceremonial dances. Instead I started moving all the posts on this 17-year-old blog to one big text file on Google drive. I’m thinking maybe I’ll get them printed at some point. 

It’s every bit as tedious as it sounds. By now the blog has almost 900 posts; I’m having to copy and paste each one. As I go through them, starting with the first one from June 2007, I’ve noticed a few things. 

First, I used to post almost every day. I posted more in the first three years than in the following eleven.  I started out focusing on crime fiction and writing, but then gradually let things devolve into the desultory – TV shows now long defunct, movies and politics and pop culture. A long road trip out west. A death in the family. And, starting in 2015 or so, a certain malignant clown who continues to bedevil us to this day. 

 Second, I’ve been kind of repetitious. The preceding paragraph is a good example. Favorite phrases and headlines and ruminations keep recurring. But then, the great advantage of having a widely unread blog is that nobody seems to notice.

Third, and forgive me the hubris, but I kind of enjoy reading all these posts in the order they were written. Unlike certain old diary entries, I don’t dislike the guy who wrote them. Only a couple are embarrassing. All in all, the blog has been a worthwhile endeavor. I’ve never been as smart as I’ve sometimes pretended, but on the other hand I don’t seem as stupid as I’ve often felt. (There’s a sentence you’ll have to read twice.)

This sounds like a coda. It’s not, really. I’ll keep posting sporadically for the foreseeable future. Almost 900 posts and counting. Maybe I’ll aim for an even grand.