Five years

I've been writing this blog for five years as of Oct. 11. Not counting this one, I have 334 posts, only around 66 or so a year, which is not impressive, although it averages out to a little more than one a week.

I've ranted and raved. I've whined. I've reminisced. I've preached. I've told stories. I've enjoyed myself immensely.

Someone asked me recently what I most like to write, and without even giving it a thought, I said, "My blog. It is all for me -- whatever I want to say, whatever I want to write, however many words I choose. It's my therapy, my safety valve, my journal."

As I was skimming back over the most recent posts, I did cringe a bit at some of the sentence structure -- sometimes I will go back and edit, but mostly I don't. Whatever comes out of my brain through my fingers is what you get. If I ever organize these posts into some sort of book, I'll edit then. Otherwise, you're stuck with my brain dumps.

I love interviewing people, learning about their stories and how they got to where they are. But writing the subsequent story is hard work, and I sweat out every paragraph, sometimes every word. I let their stories perk in my head for -- oh, let's just say that I usually wait until the deadline is looming large. And then I MUST write it, must tell the story to make that deadline.

Yes, it would be better to just write it immediately and not sweat the deadline along with how to best tell the story. But I bet nearly every writer does the same thing I do -- waits until the eleventh hour. I have tried to do it differently. Doesn't work.

I can dash off a news release about an event with no trouble at all -- years of experience in writing them. But a feature -- you can take so many different angles with most stories, and I want to be very careful to be true to the subject's words and intent. So I agonize.

But this blog -- I never lack for subjects. I never lack for a lede. It simply comes pouring out, sometimes faster than I can type. The only thing I must be careful about is saving my work, pausing occasionally to select and copy, even with the auto-save, because I've found the hard way that one little slip of a finger will delete AND save the document, and my profound words are...gone.

Not that I have any illusions about their profundity (is that a word?) This is my story. I get to write what I want. You get to choose whether or not you want to read it.

I love that you do, those faithful few of you. I love it when something I say strikes a chord in your story, and you tell me about it. For those few moments, my words have connected us, even if I don't know you.

There are a lot of words in the archives, and many of the posts have not been tagged (an ongoing project). Thank you for reading them for the past five years. Let's see where this next one takes us.