OU812

Please pardon the confetti and streamers. We're still cleaning up around here. It wasn't the Cinco de Mayo celebration that got out of hand, but that was pretty tremendous. It was the automated "Another Year Has Passed Since He Started Blogging" system that popped off somewhere around midnight. This makes eight times that the sirens, bells and whistles have interrupted my sound sleep and brought me fully awake to reckon with the fact that I have been telling anyone who clicks here about What I Believe. That and the tiny number-shaped confetti that gets stuck way down in the deep pile shag carpet are enough to make me stop fussing about this particular date. Especially since this is really just First Blog Day Observed.
The real streak began on the Monday following, when I began my absurd commitment to writing something here each day, trivial and/or otherwise, just to keep piling up stats. Eight years of three hundred and sixty-five days apiece give me, well, you do the math. I'm stuck on the notion that after all these years I still feel compelled to share my innermost thoughts on pop culture, politics, relationships, school, parenthood, sports and holidays, all served up with a patina of nostalgia.
I received an e-mail last week asking if I would be interested in discussing my blog with a documentary filmmaker who, as a project for his university study, claims to be interested in me. Or maybe just people like me. There are a lot of us. The ones who continue to type away in mild obscurity about relatively obscure events and opinions. I can say this with some confidence since, as one of the statistics that I look at is page views, I average a dozen or two visitors here each day. Most of those are my friends and family, many of whom are compelled by me to keep track of What I Believe because I have nudged them that way.
Then, every so often, I get one of those unsolicited comments. The one that says, "You are wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself." Or maybe, "Keep up the good work." Either of these come as a pleasant surprise, since as far as I know, I'm writing these things to fill up forty-five minutes of each day, making a great big stack of my thoughts that someday will be warehoused in the Library of Congress. On a disc the size of Duran Duran's Greatest Hits. Or maybe Blogger, which has been kind enough to share this web space with me for free all these years, will simply wink out of existence and all we will have are our memories of my memories.
But let's not dwell on that now. There's still so much to be pleased about. I was able to get myself through the Pinhead Administration by blogging about it. I was able to process my feelings about moving from fourth grade back to computer teacher. You have been able to witness my shift of parenting from the seven-year-old dad to father of a teenager. We have all learned a lot. Or at least spent some quality time clicking on those links I learned to add a few years back. Enjoy the day. I know I will. And now it's back to picking those little number eights out of the rug.