Octennial

And thus ends my eighth year of churning out posts for this blog.

The churning has been more subdued this year.  But, of course, quantity isn't everything.  How has my quality been?

A difficult question to answer, since "quality" is so subjective.  As far as popularity goes, my most read posts have been book reviews.  In fact, the most popular review of the year discussed only a small portion of a book -- something from India about a fakir's "Indian rope trip."  The second most popular was a review of The Maltese Falcon. 

My third most popular post, oddly enough, was a reprint of a newspaper article I had written 44 years earlier, recounting an eventful visit to Damascus.

Other popular topics were my visit to southern Africa, my terror of bears in Glacier National Park, and my satisfaction at reading studies that seemed to show that -- as we suspected all along -- more brawn means fewer brains.

But these statistics merely show which topics lured readers to the page.   They say nothing about the degree of satisfaction those readers experienced, having completed their reading.

We can't know everything, and sometimes ignorance is a good thing.  If we knew how everyone we met really saw us, we might well be paralyzed into inaction.  I might find myself walking around with a bag over my head.  Similarly, a writer -- especially a novice writer -- may be better off ignoring hostile reviews. 

So I will continue writing posts for another year, hoping they are readable, hoping they are worth reading, hoping they somehow, in some small way, improve a tiny corner of the universe.  Hearing nothing to the contrary, I'll blithely take my writing's quality for granted.

But certainly focus on improving quantity.