500

Over three years ago, I wrote the following things down for my first post on this blog:

Still learning how to work this thing.

Every now and then a single image flashes before my eyes, and that's of those days in the late 80s when I was working out how to operate the VCR.

Everything's obviously different this time around. There's not even a "Play" button in sight.

Four hundred and ninety-nine posts later, I'm still learning how to work this thing.

Yes, you counted that right. This is the 500th post I've written and published for this blog. I've come a very, very long way since that first post.

For most writers, this would be a perfect time for a retrospective. Unfortunately, I don't share their beliefs in this regard. Why should we restrict our momentous retrospectives to the posts with the big round numbers, anyway? I mean, what's the basic difference between a 500th post, and, say, a 483rd? They both mean the same thing -- that I obviously don't have any better things to do apart from work and write -- and I see no reason why Number 500 always gets to have the retrospective while Number 483 gets left out in the cold.

This is why I put up my retrospectives in the strangest places. This is also why this 500th post will get royally shafted by me tonight. This subtle rejection will ultimately develop into a form of mental trauma for this poor article; after which it will spend the next decade in a useless, drunken stupor; until it finally comes to its senses, blames me for all its troubles, and comes hunting for me with a high-powered rifle. Or not.

The truth is that I'm too lazy to do a retrospective tonight. This is the 500th post for this blog, which means that there are 499 articles before it that I now have to root through for the sake of looking at my past development. Apart from those, I also have a grand total of forty-two articles that I started writing, yet never brought to light for one reason or another. About a third of that number involves fiction in some way.

I'd like to do a total count of the comments on this blog, mind you... too bad I can't find a feature or a hack that lets me do so. As best as I can tell, I get about twenty-five comments a month. Over forty or so months, that puts it at a thousand comments. Half of those are probably mine, seeing that I try to answer everybody who drops by... so in a sense, there are 500 separate individual comments from external visitors floating around at the moment. Cute coincidence.

And then I'd also like to do a word-for-word analysis of every single post I've ever published, simply because I'm curious as to how many times I use the word "the" on this site. Then again, the word "the" shouldn't be put on a pedestal that way... I'd like to know exactly how many words I've ever written for every blasted article that appears here.

The way post number 500 should see it, my non-inclusion of a retrospective here saves me the time and trouble of doing some actual work at this time of night.

As it stands, I don't think that much has changed since I wrote my first post. Oh, I've gotten a few years older, I've written a few good yarns, and I've gotten into a more dedicated job... but I still whack my head on the keyboard trying to come up with good stories; I still hold a passion for board games, probability theory, and stuffed toys; and I still have a tendency to write about absolutely nothing at all.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. You and I both know that five hundred posts aren't likely to change that.

Here's to another five hundred posts for this blog. Maybe we'll still be around in three or four more years, if we're lucky enough to stay on topic.

Pass me that bottle of champagne, would you?