This Blog's for You

On April 6, 2006, I posted for the first time on the Musing Carnival.

Wow. It’s hard to believe the Musing Carnival turned five years old this week. It’s even harder to believe that my little blog will be starting kindergarten this fall. Time goes fast. This url has been somewhat of a living journal of my life. I guess that is what a blog is supposed to be. But to be honest, I didn’t think it would stick around.

I started throwing my thoughts out online in 2006 just to see what would happen. I thought it would be a place to share my deep – can you sense the sarcasm? – thoughts about life and so forth. That happened occasionally. And I’ve written some stuff that I look back on and think – this is crap. I tend to think that I’m doing pretty good if I can hover around 70% fascinating and 30% crap. A solid C is passing, right?

Included in the 70% is a post about Anne Rice quitting Christianity. Another time I wrote an open letter to people who like breakfast for dinner and discussed why older men tuck their t-shirts into their shorts. I’ve addressed why playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving is wrong, listed my brother’s requirements for a wife and defended my vote for Obama in 2008.

As I read back through my isolated thoughts, I’m reminded that posts aren’t created in a vacuum. This realization is a little frustrating. Even if my writing has improved along the way, I’ll never be skilled enough to capture the entire story behind each post. Which is a shame because in most cases, you – yes you – are the main characters in my stories. It’s our conversations, our trips around the world, our debates and random Tuesday mornings that inspire my semi-weekly 500-1,000 word ramblings.

You can love or hate this blog. But you should know that it’s still your fault either way.

All I ask is that you keep it up. Please. It dawned on me the other day, that out of nearly 7 billion people in the world our paths only cross with a small fraction of the population. How small exactly? Microscopic.

Let’s run the numbers. If you’re lucky, you might meet a couple thousand people in your life. 5,000 tops. You can only know about 1,000 people on a first name basis. I don’t care how many facebook friends you have. Once you leave college, only 100 people will be in your life at a time. 25 of them will be in your house on a regular basis. You spend your workweek with 12 close co-workers. 10 people truly know you. 5 know what’s best for you. And 1-2 people know you better than you know yourself - out of 7 billion.

Those numbers shouldn’t scare us. Rather they cause me to be all the more thankful for those of you who, I guess you could say, made the cut. Odds are good that if you are reading this blog, and have for the past five years, you fall on that list somewhere. I for one, am honored you are here, and humbled that you keep coming back. If this blog really is a reflection of my life, both have been made better because of you.

Thanks.

This post is for you.

And so are all the other ones.

Eric