The numbers game

This is the 1,000th post published since this site went WordPress. It’s not the 1,000th post I’ve written. My co-bloggers have added to the mix; I’ve only written 931 of those posts (not counting the ones sitting in the drafts file, or the ones I wrote and deleted, or the ones that are languishing as text files in my computer somewhere –I’ve said before that I am a writer first and foremost, and if a post isn’t working, I won’t publish it).

One thousand posts since September 4th, 2005. Forty-nine categories have been created, and 3,500 comments have been posted (as I write this). That’s a lot of words.

While I’m on the subject of numbers, April 22nd will mark the fifth anniversary of this weblog, and the beginning of my sixth year (!) writing post after post after post. Funny. I’m not quite tired of it yet, either. I wouldn’t care to guess how many millions of blogs have come and gone in the last five years, but I have an overwhelming urge to stick out my tongue and say “Neener, neener, neener!”

The most I have done is take a one-week hiatus, and that was due to the overwhelming crush of events demanding that I take a break. Someday, maybe, I’ll write about that in more detail, but that is not this day.

There are many things that I hold back from writing. Too personal. TMI. Tempting, but really, do I want thousands of strangers to know that I suffer from Morton’s Foot?

Oh, wait, I already blogged about that years ago. And still get the occasional search for it, and let me reiterate that no, I will not publish a picture of my feet to prove it.

I wish I had more time to write an essay a day. I wish I had the energy to write an essay a day. Essays are much more difficult to write than posts. Anybody can cut-and-paste and offer a line or two of analysis. But that isn’t really writing. Writing is the stuff that doesn’t include broad swatches of cut-and-paste. Writing consists of the original work supported by facts. The writing is what I like to do the most, but which is the most difficult to do, and takes the largest amount of time. Which is why I still haven’t finished “The First of the First,” an essay about the first student in my first class to have his Bar Mitvah. Or why I still haven’t written about my trip up to Northen VA. Or why this week’s podcast did not include the recordings of various readers asking “What the hell is wrong with you?”, because as I was writing the essay for the podcast, it took off in a direction that didn’t allow me to use the recordings. That’s what writing does sometimes. It has its own rhythm and timing and feeling, and when the feeling is wrong, you go in another direction or your piece sucks.

This one has taken me all day to write, starting with being interrupted by a phone call (and then another and another and another; good Lord, everybody called me today), then being unable to get back into the mood of the piece, then trying something else to get my mind out of “This thing sucks!” mode. Finally, I’m back in the piece, and the feel is back, and the rhythm is here, and the essay is near its end.

One thousand posts, ninety-three percent of which are mine. One thousand posts in seven months. Yeah, that’s a lotta words.

It’s a good thing I have such a large store of them. I’m nowhere near running out.