The Thousandth Time

You are reading the thousandth post on Mr. Dilettante. Milestones usually call for a few thoughts. And I have a few.

I began this thing on December 13, 2005, during my lunch hour, while I was working as a program analyst for Bank of America. I started my blog on the same day as two of my co-workers; we all decided it might be an amusing thing to do. The other blogs that began that day are no longer with us: Umlaut Free eventually faded out, although my friend has subsequently blogged intermittently at two other places since then. Regular readers of this feature know him as Strolling Amok or SA. The other blog, Raspberries, also faded from the scene as my other co-worker moved to Oregon with the Bank. I wrote two short posts that day and you can read them here and here. As you will note, I managed to namecheck Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Charles Lindbergh, John Murtha, Hugh Hefner, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Rawls and Lou Rawls that first day. Not much has changed that way.

It was a tough time in my life - we had learned a month earlier that Bank of America was closing their offices in Bloomington and that we could keep our jobs if we were willing to pull up stakes and move to Hillsboro, Oregon. Mrs. D and I had decided against the move and I had to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. As it has turned out, blogging is one of those things.

For the first two years of this feature, I made almost no effort to publicize my work in the blogosphere. I tried to write regularly but it wasn't unusual for me to go a week or more between posts. Life was complicated: I had to find a job and I was ill a fair amount of the time. As 2006 turned to 2007, the reasons for my illness became clear and I used this blog to chronicle my story.

Eventually I got better and by the end of 2007, things were going much better. And as my health improved, the pace of blogging picked up quite a lot. I joined the MOB, started writing for True North and even got the attention of a few local politicians. It took me 2 years to write my first 500 posts -- the second 500 have come in less than a year.

As I've pursued this venture, I've sometimes been surprised by a few things. I knew from the start that I would write about sports, music and politics, because those are things that matter. As things have developed, this blog has become increasingly political and sometimes I wished that weren't the case. Even though I spend a hell of a lot of time discussing political matters, I'd really rather not. What is evident is that we live in a time where politics have so thoroughly permeated the culture that it becomes very difficult to avoid political discussions, unless you decide to disengage from the larger world. We are in high season for politics right now and some pretty momentous things have been happening in recent days. There is an excellent chance that we might see a charismatic but deeply flawed man occupy the Oval Office in January. It's also possible that Barack Obama might win, too. It's a matter that merits discussion and I'll continue to follow it here; I fully expect that Post 1001 will concern the debate later this evening.

Once the election is over, my goal is to write a little less about politics. We'll always have politics and politicians always merit the gimlet eye, but it gets old. I'd rather post links to YouTube videos any time; there's more joy and surprise in mining the silliness of the past than trying to slog through a Lori Sturdevant column any time. Reaching that goal may be tough, but it's worth trying.

Most of all, I want to thank everyone who comes here for a visit. I am deeply grateful that you are willing to spare some of your time for this feature. Some of you comment frequently and I appreciate that, but there are others who visit regularly anonymously. I appreciate you, too. Writing is performance as much as anything else and I hope that you'll continue to see value in what you find here. Enjoy the show!