Project 1,827

Me. The Cat. Dec 30, 2023

 

It was Dec 30, 2018, and this little corner of the interwebs had run out of steam.

I had only posted 33 times on "Exit 55" that year and I was just about convinced to walk away.

The blog had dwindled to no more than 81 posts a year from 2014 to 2018. 

Every year, right around Dec 30, I'd get a creative nudge to pull it together and write more. By early January, the nudge was gone.

When I started this back in 2006, I didn't want it to just die (much like my podcast did). I had several friends try their hand at blog writing and it was ultimately them who gave me the push into trying it.

Their blogs lasted a short time. I wanted to avoid that. I knew it would be a commitment and for seven years, I was pretty good about creating posts.

But by 2014, I was working as a broadcaster and writer with the HAN Network. The inspiration had just changed.

By late 2018, I wasn't working as a writer anymore, for what it's worth.

And so I wrote a post five years ago today about the classic radio baseball broadcasts you can find on the internet. 

It was hardly To Kill A Mockingbird but it was a start. Or a restart.

A day later, I wrote about John Nash's encouragement to do a post per day, something I'd been trying to do for years.

Those were the first two posts and I haven't stopped since. It's now 1,827 days in a row.

There have been a few near misses and a few spots in which I suppose I could be accused of cheating. The cheats have been when I have written the next day's post ahead of time to stay on schedule.

The near misses mostly involved travel with time zone changes, when I flew to San Francisco as well as to London. I wrote one post late at night in California and posted it after midnight in New York. But, as I was in California and before midnight, I counted it.

There was another time where I wouldn't have been home before midnight, so I used my phone as a hotspot and data in a shopping center parking lot in Norwalk. I wrote. I posted. Done.

There have been other instances of that as well. I've done everything I can to adhere to the rules and keep this daily habit of posting something.

I've tried to make this authentic and honest. I've tried to tell stories but not tell everything. I think it's important to find the line and not cross it.

Yes, the line has occasionally been crossed and that means people have been hurt by things written here. I apologize for that.

People have also been confused because writing sometimes means being vague.

This was also meant to be an outlet.

I've heard someone once question why I needed to write a blog. I didn't need it. I wanted it. A college professor suggested that I should mentor students in writing and I was always stunned by that. Writing was never expected to be something I would do and I don't know that I still consider myself a writer.

But I wanted to try it. I wanted to see if I was any good at it.

I also didn't want to make a mockery of it. Too many people can just walk in and try things (you know, like broadcasting) and it can be at best awkward. 

I didn't want that.

The blog didn't end after those posts to end 2018. Instead, it revitalized it. I suppose, if I have any concern, it's that the quality has dropped off as I often struggle for words on a nightly basis.

That's something I'll think about another time.

Tonight, I get to smile at the notion that I've written a post every day for five years.

It's not heavy lifting. Like broadcasting, it's heavy thinking, I suppose.

Thanks for reading.