2400

A milestone nearly slipped by unnoticed yesterday: My "Sunday Sundries" was post #2400 on Dawn Reader, an almost daily blog I commenced on January 6, 2012. (Link to that initial post.) And so I pause today--as has been my custom--to reflect a little (and I mean a little) on the seven years+ that have ensued since "I Am Born," the first post (its title stolen from the title of the first chapter of Dickens' David Copperfield).

First--I rarely check to see how many "hits" I have on the site; I do so only after each 100 posts. So ... pause while I take a look ...

[PAUSE]

... 528,743 total--that's an average of about 220 visitors per day. (Thank God I don't have to serve them all tea and crumpets!) A very modest total--about the same number that other bloggers get every minute of every day. So it goes.

As I've written here before (and if you look at the initial post, you'll see), I'd originally thought I would write more about education/teaching than I have. But too many years have passed by; in a word, I kind of don't know what I'm talking about anymore. I taught my last public school class in mid-January 1997; I taught my last prep school class in June 2011. And although the Test Craze was in its infancy when I retired, I have no idea what it's like, dealing with that pressure, day to day to day to day. So ... I don't say much about it.

Instead, I've found myself writing about quotidian things--about memories--about silly thoughts--about darker thoughts (my fourteen-year "relationship" with cancer). I've also serialized books here. (I'll be starting another one in a month or so--still doing some research.)

Another change: I don't get all bent out of shape when I skip a day (or two--or seven). Sometimes, you see, Life intrudes, and I just don't have time--or melancholy surges through my system--or ... whatever. I really haven't run out of ideas yet--I dread that day. But some days I just know: Dawn Reader ain't gonna happen today.

For the most part, though, I've loved doing it. The blog is kind of a record of my last dozen years; many of the pieces I wrote for my son and his family (here are family stories that exist nowhere else). Many I've written for Joyce, the best audience a writer ever had. And many I've written for myself. As Emerson wrote in his essay "The Poet" (1844), "Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, 'It is in me, and shall out.'"

I guess we need to modify that: "Doubt not, O blogger, ...."

I do have one serious doubt, though: Will blogs survive much longer? It seems the world is moving on from them; podcasts and other forms of mass social communication are the replacements. (Why read something when you can watch it? Or listen to it? Or simply look at it?)

So, once again, in yet another way, I resemble the dinosaur looking at the approaching meteorite. Instead of lumbering for cover, the saurian creature merely returns to munching on leaves (or other critters) and goes much too gentle into that good night. His/Her world is changing--dramatically, drastically--but he/she would rather munch than modify.