Quindecennial

It's frightening to consider that a wee innocent babe who arrived on Earth on the day that I posted my first post on this blog would today be a high school student.  And celebrating his 15th birthday.  

A birthday also celebrated by this blog.

Yes, it was on March 20, 2007, that I put pen to paper -- or fingers to keyboard -- and posted my first blog post.  It was a display of brilliance that gave great promise for the future.  In its entirety:

Ok, my friend. Now that you've spent too much time deciding how this blog page should appear esthetically, and even more time deciding how best to present to the indifferent world an idealized description of your ever-important Self, you really might want to decide what it is you're going to write about. Don't you think?

Gosh and golly ... I stare off into space ... and await inspiration.

 

Fortunately, inspiration did arrive, and I thought of a few more things to say in later posts, of which, to date, there have been 1,464.  Readers who were around last year, recall my bragging that I had published a record 148 posts in calendar year 2020.

Nemesis follows hubris, as the Greeks liked to say.  This past year -- as I began complaining as early as October in "Autumnal Melancholy" -- has been a year of writer's block.  I've kept hoping I'd bounce back, but so far it's getting worse.

I did post a moderately acceptable 100 times in calendar year 2021 -- not yet the dread "Nemesis" -- but that number was padded, perhaps, by an unusually high number of reprints from travel journals and other writings from my younger years.  Embarrassingly, those reprints often received the highest amount of reader interest, as measured from recorded hits.

But I'm a fighter, not a quitter.  I will struggle back to new levels of both quality and quantity.

So, as is my annual tradition, let's take a look at both quantity and quality during this past year.  By far, the highest number of hits landed on my summary of my September visit to Lake Como.  Following, by number of hits, were a reminiscence of a troublesome college roommate; a review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way; and a tribute to (and obituary for) my closest childhood friend.

As usual, it's easier to list the most popular posts than it is to decide which were the "best."  In my eyes, which were "best" often merely means the ones I feel happiest reading over again now.  Rather than rank them, I think I'll do what I did two years ago -- simply list my nine favorite in order of date of publication.  

1.  "Charley" -- remembering a memorable sophomore roommate.

2.  A description of my first pandemic trip out of state -- by train to Oxnard, California.   "Trains in the Time of Covid".

3.  A review of Mark Richards's Father, Son, and the Pennine Way.  

4.  A review of Catherine Gilbert Murdock's YA novel, DaVinci's Cat.

5.  A salute to the drinking of milk.   Drink Your Milk.

6.  An appreciation of my sister's rural home in central Idaho.  "Nature's Art".

7.  A summary of my stay for a week in a rental on the shore of Lake Como, Italy.  "Happy Days at Lake Como".

8.  A tribute to (and obituary for) a close childhood friend, "Lee Quarnstrom, 1939-2021"

9.  A celebration of November rain in Seattle.  "November Rain".

I've modestly omitted all of my various travel journal reprints, reprints that proved surprisingly popular.  My list is meant to be a list of accomplishments during the past year, not of my writings as a wild-eyed youth.

I look forward to my sixteenth year of blogging.  Hopefully, I'll find ways to shake off  the somewhat puzzling lethargy of 2021.