500 Days of Slumber

Two years ago I tackled my first blog post. It was two sentences long. I wrote that I intended to keep an online diary of my retirement years and over the next 50+ days before I retired I would learn what I needed to do, saying it was "just a chance to learn how to blog and play around" until I stopped working. Two things followed.

The first surprised no one who knows me. I didn't have the patience to wait, and two days later I started writing regular posts. Actually, while I still had eight weeks until retirement and was still showing up at the office, I had pretty much already stopped working so I wasn't jumping the gun that much.

The second thing that followed will have completely surprised anyone who knows me - including me. I have stuck with this. Let's just say that in the phrase "fits and starts" I'm usually the "starts" part. I have the type of personality where I start so many things with enthusiasm and determination and then grow bored or lazy or whatever. And yes, I can hear several of you saying "Ah, that explains his first two marriages!"

Anyhow, back to this blogging business, today marks my 500th posting.

You would hardly think enough happens to an old fat retired guy to justify writing about himself 500 times in two years. But in that time, I have written about dozens of places we have visited as we traveled the world; I have posted about moving our house, fixing the toaster and working out on the Wii. Hmmm, as I said, perhaps there isn't enough going on to justify writing so much.

There have certainly been lots of days when I drew a complete blank - couldn't think of anything to post. I would whine to LK, "I can't write about falling down again!" and she would wisely suggest, "Then write about trying to stand up afterwards, dear."

I also know I have some very loyal readers. Well, call it by its name - family pressure. My mother will routinely chide me for not having posted in a couple of days. My mother-in-law Peg will tell one and all that she reads my blog every day and they should, too. Sandy used to write comments that I made her cry, but she stopped when I blogged about that. My Dad will occasionally react to something I wrote, like last week when he said, "Those Australians - I don't know how they get anything done!"

When I did a post about all the Don Kennedy's in the world, I even heard from a couple of guys named Don Kennedy. And once I even had a brush with fame when I posted about watching Groomer Has It and loving the contestant, Jorge. He wrote comments to me - twice in fact - and that was a hoot. (And Jorge, if you still scan for your mentions on the web, thanks for commenting and I hope all is well.)

So there you have it. 500 posts, and for those of you interested in statistics this blog has had more than 11,000 visits from more than 1,200 different people. People (or automated web tools) from 54 countries have visited at least once, but the regulars are almost exclusively from the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Those stats would be pretty disappointing for a commercial web site - and in fact remind me of the stats of some of the commercial web sites I started when I was working. But it's a hoot to know that even an old guy with not a lot to say can ride the edge of this new media and have some fun doing it.