Half A Millennium

Still yet another interruption of our bad writing series, this post will be much in the same lighthearted vein as Monday's post. Whereas Monday's was devoted to yet another aspect of my personal life, today's will be devoted to an aspect of my public life that everyone here has not yet gotten their fill of.

For today, Cedar's Mountain has reached a wicked milestone that I honestly never thought would've happened when I started this blog some twenty six and a half months ago.
If you weren't able to deduce it from the title, this post is number 500. If you weren't able to deduce it from the title, then you got the makings of a career politician in whatever state/province/country you happen to be visiting this blog from.

Yes, it's hard to imagine that I manage to (officially) crank out 500 posts on this tiny little corner of the Cyber World. To quote Ralph Kiner, lets do a happy recrap of the (official) 500 posts that grace this here weblog.

1} To clarify the word official: Around early 2009, I decided to nuke about 35+ posts that dealt with (at the time) a pretty rotten story called "A Betrayal Of Vows". Why did I nuke it? Gee, I don't know. Perhaps it had do with that little self published nugget that is prominently displayed in the upper left hand corner of the front page, of which more info can be found at my book blog.

2} About 15% of the posts written for this blog were lead-ins to my closed, but still wide open, short story blog Flashing Georgie's Shorts. Which if you think about it, was a pretty remarkable achievement in itself. I mean, think it about for a moment: how many people do you honestly know wrote original stories and posted them on their own blog, thereby effectively depriving a potential home elsewhere for them? I thought so.

3} Even though I made it a point to feature 100% original content for this blog, I repeated exactly three posts. All three appeared earlier this year when I decide to take a brief mental break from the trials and tribulations that were my life.

4} I originally designed this blog to be repository of the following topics: writing (specifically self-publishing), chat rooms, work and relationships. Over the course of these 500 posts, the blog has exploded like a bad computer virus and has covered almost every conceivable topic that I could think of, and some that I didn't even think of. Think I'm kidding? When you get a free moment, check out some of the tags that have a numeral less than 20 attached to them.

5} Words. This blog has for the most part featured nothing but words, with very few pictures thrown in. Even the links featured nothing but words. One thing that I continually work on with this blog, above all others, is description. I know that to be overly descriptive with your writing can be a bad thing, but I like to think that from over the course of these 500 posts, I managed to not only touch a particular emotion with you from time to time, but with myself as well.

6} Pictures and video. I started getting into pictures and video very late in this blog (like late 2009), but once I did, I found a brand new outlet for the minutia that makes up an ungodly percentage of my life. While I used the video very sparingly (I believe I've posted a grand total of one dozen video links, most of which were lumped in with my birthday and my dad's birthday), the pictures grew to the point where I started yet another blog, Shooting Suburbia and only about 2.5% of the posts so far have been dedicated to that blog. Yeah, my memory is just that good.

7} I've had exactly three posts written by other people featured on this blog. One was a group post celebrating my one year blog anniversary (i think), featuring three people of which one I'm no longer friends with, one who I'm sort of friends with but haven't spoken to since April and one who introduced me to blogging and who I still talk to on a monthly basis; one was written by a current friend whose daughter was featured in a blog post here earlier this year; and the last one was written by a co-worker whose book was reviewed by me here and is the perfect example of how to be a success in self-publishing (see the tag called Juvenile Fiction for more info).

8} On the other hand, I've written an entire short story that contained nothing but links to other favorite blogs of mine, using only their sub-titles/titles for sentence structure.

9} On the other other hand, in order to reach 500 posts in two years (on the average, most people I think would hit 500 in a period longer than two years. however, a few of my readers here who I share some mutual blogs with, know of a person who managed to put out 500 posts in about eight month time frame), I started and maintained a pace that would freak the average blogger out (no, not you Bea, for no one could ever call you average). Starting in May '08 and running thru Aug '08, I posted twice a day every other day. Yes, this pace did burn me out, so I cut down to one post every other day and maintained that pace from Sep '08 thru Feb '10. March '10 to the present has found me posting on M-W-F schedule, with a sometimes bonus on Saturday and a half post on Sunday for Shooting Suburbia.

10} I've had only three extended breaks from blogging: vacation in Aug '08 (nobody knew me then, so nobody missed me), a break in March '09 (created FSG during that hiatus), and the personal break I took the second week of June this year. Most of the other breaks I've taken were mostly of the long holiday garden variety type of silliness.

11} Finally, for the last of my bullet points here, there has been exactly one post in which my entire name has been featured. I'm not talking about my original persona here (Georgie B) nor my current persona (G) nor even when I make the rare genuine heartfelt comment on another person's blog when they wrote a rather poignant post and I attach my proper first name (George). I am talking about my full complete name.
There you have it folks, 11 talking points covering a good cross section of the 500 posts that call Cedar's Mountain their home. I hope to be around for the other half of the millennium, but I'll settle for the modest goal of reaching post #550 by the end of this year.