![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Turning five...
Jun. 26th, 2005 06:16 amDepending on which count you believe, I've made either just over or just short of 3000 posts over the five years that I've been a member of this community. As is my wont, I've done a little back-of-the envelope musing, assuming that I average 100 words per post (a number I think is conservatve), and I've come to the conclusion that I've laid something like 300,000 words down on phosphor over the past five years, which is the equivalent of at least two book-size tomes.
I have been sitting here at the MCC in Houston this morning fighting sleep the way Batman fights crime - intermittently yet effectively - but without the mental acuity to recall if I've ever mentioned one of the inspirations for my continued presence here. In the year of two before I quit New York, there was a story on the evening television news there of a citizen of that city who had been keeping a typewritten journal for the past 25 years or so, for his own personal amusement, in which he held forth on the mundane and the remarkable, on local affairs and those of the world. I still recall the glimpse of video from that story, showing a middle-aged man, wearing glasses and a ponytail, sitting amid an impressive pile of manuscript boxes filled with his typed musings.
Why do I find it inspiring? For the knowledge that keeping a journal on a consistent basis can be done, and the gut feeling that in the end, it is worthwhile, if only on an individual basis.
For you see, I have no idea whether anything came of his effort; I suspect not. I also suspect that he didn't decide to call it quits after chronicling a quarter of a century of his life, and that he continued tapping away to the end (or, if he is still alive, that he is still tapping at a very old age).
Writing, as Robert Heinlein noted, is a dirty little itch that needs scratching. The fortunate and the talented are able to do it and have people pay them handsomely for the effort. The rest of us must make do.
Cheers...
I have been sitting here at the MCC in Houston this morning fighting sleep the way Batman fights crime - intermittently yet effectively - but without the mental acuity to recall if I've ever mentioned one of the inspirations for my continued presence here. In the year of two before I quit New York, there was a story on the evening television news there of a citizen of that city who had been keeping a typewritten journal for the past 25 years or so, for his own personal amusement, in which he held forth on the mundane and the remarkable, on local affairs and those of the world. I still recall the glimpse of video from that story, showing a middle-aged man, wearing glasses and a ponytail, sitting amid an impressive pile of manuscript boxes filled with his typed musings.
Why do I find it inspiring? For the knowledge that keeping a journal on a consistent basis can be done, and the gut feeling that in the end, it is worthwhile, if only on an individual basis.
For you see, I have no idea whether anything came of his effort; I suspect not. I also suspect that he didn't decide to call it quits after chronicling a quarter of a century of his life, and that he continued tapping away to the end (or, if he is still alive, that he is still tapping at a very old age).
Writing, as Robert Heinlein noted, is a dirty little itch that needs scratching. The fortunate and the talented are able to do it and have people pay them handsomely for the effort. The rest of us must make do.
Cheers...
