This is a favorite keyboard. I used it for years. I wore away many of the letters from the keys. It has dents in the bottom row made by my fingernails. My thumb rubbed away a section of the hard plastic space bar. I surely have a space bar callous on that thumb. This hasn’t been my only keyboard. I’ve had many over the years. But this is one I surely used for many of my blog posts. I should have pulled it out and used it tonight to celebrate my 2,000th blog post.  I did a quick average computation of the possible number of words I’ve slid out into the blog cybersphere. With a conservative estimate of 750 average words per post, that adds up to a million and a half words. That’s enough words to fill up fifteen 1oo,ooo books.

Tonight I am strolling down memory lane to that very fist blog post when I was tentatively tiptoeing into the blogging universe back in January 2008. That’s seventeen years ago. Since then, I’ve worn out more than the letters on my keyboards. I’ve worn out four, maybe five, maybe more, computers. In that first post so many years ago, I had high hopes of connecting with readers with my words.

January 8, 2008

Hi, everybody. I’m just a country girl who’s been writing forever. I hope to share some of what I’ve learned about writing over the years and some about being a country girl through and through.

I’m an author with 16 or 17 published books.

~~

So, you can see that’s been a while since now I have 40 published books.

At first I was going to do a blog post on Saturday or Sunday. Then on Wednesday I would share something simple like a few quotes or maybe a reason to smile like this September post in 2008.

September 25, 2008

Here are some zany words of advice and a few definitions that make entirely too much sense.

Plan to be spontaneous – tomorrow.On the other hand, you have different fingers. (This one’s my favorite.)Mosquito – An insect that makes you like flies better.Dust – Mud with the juice squeezed out.Yawn – An honest opinion openly expressed. (Hope you weren’t yawning while you read my book.)Gossip – A person who will never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage.Adult – A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle. (Ouch! I could have left that one off, couldn’t I?)

Hope something makes you smile every day. Better yet every hour. No, not every minute. That would just be too much. You’d feel like a beauty pageant contestant and your smiling muscles would wear out.

~~

Then in 2011 I shared about writing my many blog posts.

September 22, 2011

Your blog is your unedited version of yourself. ~ Lorelle

How many blogs can a blogger blog before a blogger gets bogged down in all those blogs and feels blah?
Say that 10 times fast if you dare. I’m not sure if I was trying to come up with a tongue twister this a.m. or if I felt the blogging blues coming on. Maybe not the blues. Maybe creative panic instead. I’ve written a lot of blog posts. What if I run out of anything to say? Maybe I’ve already run out.

But then again, maybe not. I’m pretty laid back about my blog. I’ve always liked writing in my journal and that’s what this blog is for me. One Writer’s Journal. But I do have to admit I might not write exactly the same things I might write in my notebook journal for my eyes only. A lot of the writing related entries in my journals that stretch way back through decades of writing were about my writing progress or lack of progress. Many of the entries were an attempt to boost the spirits of one tired writer – me.

While I don’t know how many eyes are actually going to be reading this – maybe very few – I am aware of the potential of people reading my thoughts. And I do think Lorelle got it right in her quote above. Blogging here is a kind of unedited writing for me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to write. I spend more time trying to find a photo to dress the blog up a little. And then once I find the photo, it usually makes a difference in what I write. Sort of like those improvisational actors and actresses who ask for ideas from the audience and then do a skit about the idea on the spot. That actually sounds great to me. Throw some ideas at me and let me try to come up with a few paragraphs.

The picture is one I took last year when I went to California and we rode down the coastline. When I was casting about for a picture and thinking about blogging, the idea of blogging being a bridge of communication between people came to mind. Tenuous, for sure, but I needed a picture and an idea.

So do you think I’ve gone over the bridge and into the blogging blahs? Do I really want you to answer that? Yeah, go ahead. I like hearing what you’re thinking. I like the description of a blog below. I think that about covers it all. That and a “blog is a bridge across the internet to connect a writer and a reader.” So thanks for being that reader today.

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In the following post, I wrote about blogging through the years and quoted some of my 1st blog post as I did at the beginning of this post. I didn’t share that again, but then I share more of that first post.

April 15, 2020 – Writing Out Loud

Here’s the last paragraph in that first blog in 2008.

I’ll tell you more about growing up in the country next post. Wouldn’t want to give away all my secrets the first day. These blogs have a ravenous appetite for words.

Boy, was I right about that ravenous appetite of blogs! Words, words and more words. This will be my 1469th post. Wow. Maybe I should have written more books instead. But I like journal writing as I said in Post 2 back in 2008.

I’m figuring out what exactly I want to write about in my blog. I’ve been a journal writer forever, but that’s writing to myself. Now this may be writing to myself too, but it’s like leaving my journal open out on the kitchen table where anybody can read it. That might be okay. I’ve done some of my best writing in journals. 

Since then I’ve left my journal open on a lot of nights. I want you to know I’ve appreciated each and everyone of you who has taken a peek.

Some of my next million words will be here on One Writer’s Journal where the great thing about blogging is this from an anonymous (no doubt blogging) writer. “Blogging is not rocket science. It’s about being yourself and putting what you have into it.”

“Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out  loud.” (Andrew Sullivan)

Writing out loud. That’s a good way to look at blogging.

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A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. ~(blogger)

You and me – we’re a partnership. Here, but especially with my books. The stories come from my imagination, but it takes your imagination while reading the stories to truly make the story circle. Thanks for reading this 2,000th post and for others through the years and making our friendship circle of words.

Have you ever thought that you are in a partnership with a writer when you read their words?