The Story of Five Hundred

Today is my 500th post to South by Southwest.
The number 500 means that it is time for reflections, for again taking stock . . .
My story as an emerging little bloggger is not unique. It is been a creative adventure that millions of others are taking. It is maddening and fun, confining and freeing, satisfying and frustrating. I have posted most mornings - early or late - and been occasionally absent while traveling. And for one period I was not feeling like watching any news or writing about current events. My thyroid medication level was seriously out of adjustment causing a pervasive level of anxiety. You can follow that difficult period from mid April of this year to May 4 when I had to contemplate leaving home for a trip. On June 9, when I arrived back home from an extended visit to the locale of my family of origin, I had again become able to tolerate all the bad news.
First posting - "The Launch" was on March 29, 2005. Wordsmiths use all the tricks at their command. I unconsciously chose the boat metaphor and added a terrible pun, "paddle on, web surfers." Writers need ideas. Over time much of my subject matter came from watching C-SPAN or regular news on television. I used newspapers less and less, like most Americans. I was also very inspired by other bloggers. However, I have always struggled over joining the crowd covering the current "buzz" or finding something about which to write first.
Skill-building - Start with a few keystroke shortcuts, learn a little HTML and you're off. By the 7th post I had learned to make a hot link. In the 13th one I posted one of my earlier pieces of writing, "Vegas, Baby!" My best poem "Make War no More"was posted to begin July of last year. On July 26 I included my first illustration, a space shuttle photo. Eventually I learned about copyrights and collected a number of free photos and clip art that I use for illustrating posts. I began with a feeble attempt to use tags on 9/17/05. I discovered those delightful blockquotes and bullet points. My Oct. 30, 2005 post was done in a new style, using bold paragraph headings to lead the scanning reader's eye down the page. I happily switched to Blogger Beta several months ago. That move really changed my blogging as I became more aware of the graphic nature of blogs - the look and shape of a post. I liked the ability to use colored text. And I found that Beta's labels, as well as tags, were wonderful for my obsessive side. The arduous task of labeling all old posts bore fruit for me: it became apparent what subjects I had been obsessed about and which I had been neglecting.

Themes soon began to emerge. Every blogger has his or her subjects that remain compelling over time. Mine are summarized in the orange box at the top of the page, and under "sw stance" in the right column. I quote from a few of my own posts, putting themes in italics.

• The first is "Learning to live with the frustrations of being "Blue" in a very "Red" state has been an on-going personal challenge since the beginning of this century."


• Another, "A blogger gave a handy hint: Calling G. W. Bush "the current President" helps reinforce that he is temporary."


• "We must focus on maintaining perspective in the presence of new and disturbing information."


• I was a newbie just learning all this from scratch. I called myself a little blogger, and noted from early-on my favorite big blogs and bloggers such as Steve Clemons and DailyKos.


• There were frequent references to good writers and authors, "a series of experiences that solidified my respect for good writing and my love of books," that reinforced my own committment to write well.


• I am a Gemini and I often wrote about feeling conflicted. Using the (compare and contrast) method, you could often read the phrase, "on the one hand . . . on the other hand."


• Some posts were about synchronicity and many were efforts to make sense of an insane world.

My main subjects - focused on U.S. politics (336 posts), rants about Bush (298), foreign policy(277), war (266) and Congress (198 posts) - the most popular posts are linked. Cheney got 40 mentions; Condoleezza "Puh-leeze!" Rice got 42. I reflected on several natural disasters, political scandals and polarization (generating longest comment thread-14).

Ranting - Unresolved issues that bug me include hunger and poverty, failures in separation of church and state, secrecy and civil liberties violations, ongoing violence and war, poor leadership, fear mongering, global warming, the presence of John Bolton and the neocons, regional troubles such as the Gulf Coast and the middle East, election and media failures.

Celebrating - In addition to good writers, I celebrated people standing for peace, political moderates, NASA's space achievements, several admirable women, the 9/11 Commission, the Democrats and the Clintons, and blogging.

"Taking Stock" # 1 (6/26/05) was an assessment similar to today's. I quote from the post's objectives:

. . . Looking for any emerging themes. These came out: anxiety about the state of the world; ambivalence about contentious issues; interest in synchronicity; returning often to the classic existential questions of finding meaning in suffering and purpose in my life. . . .Getting an impression of my overall writing tone, my "voice:" it is rather clear what worries me; it is not so clear what I celebrate. . . . Attempting to make an objective critique of my ability to be authentic, to keep good boundaries, and to add something of value to the Blogosphere: I surprise myself at times. Any writer just loves it when something just seems to "write itself." If once in a great while my muse appears like that, and I am in awe.

What will the story in Number 501 be about? Who knows? I certainly do not. But I have full confidence that my muse will never completely desert me. I know from my experience earlier this year. The discipline of writing is what saves us all. I was able to write something adequate most days, even if not brilliant nor very topical.











I close with prayers for the recovery of Senator Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota.




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My "creative post" today at Southwest Blogger is about Christmas as a child.