One Year Minus Two Days

Posted on June 20, 2003 in Gratitude Milestones

Nearly a year has passed since I wrote the first entry for this weblog. My original idea for this as a weblog for IRC chatters was forgotten, it seems, in a matter of hours. Two days into the great experiment I wrote:

When I look down this page at the rant I just posted (yeah, even rants can be truthful — the defining factor is a sense of rage), I feel a little embarassed. Why can’t I write about the cactus garden on have on my porch like a normal person might? Or reflect about the puma who sometimes prowls the wilderness park a block from my house? My cats make good subject matter, too. And then there is the local skunk, the oppossums, and the raccoons I sometimes catch on hot summer nights washing some dainty in the complex’s waterfall. Yes, I do have a life that is not IRC or the InterNet. I just need to get on my own case about leading it and writing about it.

Looking back, it appears that I did just that. My purpose shifted from recording chats to composing an extended letter to the world about my thoughts and discoveries. There are times when I feel like Henrik, the gloomy cello player in A Little Night Music who complains about being

Ninety on my deathbed

the late or rather later

Henrik Eigermann

Doesn’t anything begin?”

But I look back and I see not just beginnings, but continuances, small sparks of insight that explode. I’m no pundit: I don’t pore over the newspapers and online media seeking the great stories. I decided not to make this blog just a capsule summary of the news like so many of the blogs out there, but a personal expression.

Not everyone has been happy with me. I’ve found myself defending my position from people who think that as part of a fair exchange of views they don’t have to share what they think. Plenty of people have taken fright at my jeremiads, which I have deliberately and mischievously crafted in the apocalyptic style, partly to shock certain of the religious, partly as poetic exercise. Others find me confusing — how can I have both lesbians and ministers as friends? There are all too many occasional readers and commentators on this blog. Like most men who write about themselves rather than about politics or bizarre sex, I find that I receive few comments.

I’ve heard that this is because I write so much. Maybe that’s valid, but I’ve seen others who rattle on at greater length, combining what I break up into several articles in a single long rant: they get more comments.

Then there are those who cut me without explanation from their blogrolls or who “moved with no forwarding address”. These disappearances happened at two key periods of my life: when my Prozac was no longer helping me cope with my depression and when the war broke out. I don’t write Sylvia Bombeck style about my daily life and I don’t pretend to be an all-knowing expert on world affairs: I just strive to speak about the things that I believe I know.

Some of the people who cut me check in from time to time, just to see what I am saying. They don’t leave comments, just their phosphorescent trails that Glowhost notes and puts in my site access logs. I don’t visit their sites once they’ve cut the relationship: I move most of them to a B-list that you can find on my links page (which I am going to reformat soon).

But to those who continue to come, thank you. Thank you to all the other “small bloggers” out there, the ones who don’t slosh around in the great whirlpool of popularity, who tell it like they see it, and keep trying new things. Thank you to those who comment to remind me that they know that I am still alive. Thank you to those who express their differences honestly and without resorting to personal attack, for being truthful about what they think. Thank you to those who visit every day — who don’t just carry me on their blogrolls as a reciprocity, but like to come here. Thank you to those who have told others about me and brought me new traffic. Thank you to those who have taken pains to let me know where they have gone. Thank you to those who send the occasional email or who have taken the trouble to seek me out on MSN Messenger. Thank you to those who encourage my photography and my writing. Thank you to those who kept reading me even though I made mistakes and accusations that weren’t true. Thank you to those who never saw my apologies as a sign that I was inferior to them or weak or stupid. Thank you to those who keep carrying me on their blogrolls, accepting me as me.

This article has had its negativism. But against that shadow, the features illuminated by the Light become more clear. Thank you for being a reader and a friend.