Quinquennial

Five years ago today, I nervously entered my first post on my newly adopted template for "Confused Ideas from the Northwest Corner." In that post, I noted that I'd spent a lot of time planning out and arranging the format, but that, having completed those details, wasn't really sure what I was now supposed to talk about.

Five years and 497 posts later, I have to admit that I'm amazed to have persisted so uncharacteristically, surprised that I'm still coming back here regularly and sharing my writings.

As I've noted on earlier anniversaries, my mix of subject matter has varied slightly over the years. During the first two years, many of my posts were aimed at politics, especially the Obama-Clinton battle for the Democratic nomination, the vehemence of my thundering pronouncements aided and abetted by comments and criticisms from another novice blogster, a very bright high school writer named Zachary (now a politically disaffected -- but academically very successful -- senior engineering student at the University of Colorado). With time, I gradually increased the percentage of posts devoted to book and movie reviews, comments on scientific items I came across in the press, and discussions of my personal enthusiasms for long hikes in foreign places and for making fumbling attempts at playing the piano.

What most my posts have in common is more a desire to organize and understand my own thoughts than to communicate those same thoughts to you, my hapless readers -- but, of course, both desires at all times co-exist.

So the guy on the haystack still sits there, five years later, and still ponders the fascinating and bewildering world in which he lives. I fully expect to find myself still pondering and still writing away when Year Six comes around. Thanks for sticking with me.