Joy! The 700 Club!

I have seen the light! I have arrived at the oasis that the Almighty Schwartz has created for me, looked around at all of my fellow brothers and sisters and said those word that they longed to hear, for birds of a feather really do flock together.

"Where's the beer? Where's the keg? Where's the nachos?"

Gotcha.

The 700 club that I'm talking about is the one that not too many bloggers can hit nowadays. To hit 700 means that you had perseverance to stick with a blog through whatever obstacle and challenges that life had to throw at you.

For some people, reaching 700 total blog posts for one blog isn't that big of a deal, simply because they can reach that many in less than a year. For someone like me, 700 represents an incredible milestone that will, in all likelihood, never be duplicated again.

For those of you who may be Johnny-Come-Lately to this blog, I have a mild form of ADD, although back in my childhood it was called hyperactiveness. I have touched upon this subject from time to time, not as an excuse to not do anything but more as something to which I struggle to keep dormant and out of my life.

Because of this wonderful "gift", I've struggled with having patience and the wherewithal to stick with something for any kind of length of time longer than six months (marriage and work very notable exceptions, sitting at 22 years and 15 years respectively).

Writing is one example of this perseverance. Because I have such high standards for myself, I always expect to be very good at something within two or three months. If it doesn't happen, I stop and try something else.

When I started to write back in 2006, I had the same stubborn mentality, which as some of you may or may know culminated in self-pubbing a very mediocre novel. But nevertheless, I persevered and kept on writing, simply because it was something I wanted to do. A good friend suggested I move to the blogs from the chat rooms so as to pursue my dream of writing in earnest.

Blogging helped me build up my confidence and discover other blogs that gave me the nudge that I need to get off my lazy ass and really crack down on my writing. Slowly but surely, I improved my writing. I opened and closed a short story blog, met other writers who gave me excellent feedback and by 2011, I had a modicum of success with two short stories published (scroll back up for the links).

Blogging pretty much paralleled by writing. Not only did I have to practice and tweak my blog content, but I had to painstakingly build up my readership as well. Which meant putting myself out there for the world to see which meant "trolling" other blogs so that other would be curious enough to stop by. And in order to get people to not only stop at my blog to check it out but also to return after that initial visit, I had to produce content that was not only interesting to me but interesting to others as well.

Like most endeavors that I choose to partake in, I completely immersed myself. I started off on a punishing pace of two posts per day every other day, which lasted about 4 months. The next phase consisted of one post per day every other day. That lasted until early 2010, when I decided that burnout was becoming such a real possibility that I needed to change things up toot sweet.

That change became a M-W-F posting schedule with more often than not a non-meaty Sunday post.

Throughout the past thirty-eight months, I have been blessed with a seemingly bottomless well in which all kinds of topics, ideas and themes can be endlessly touched upon.

I am incredibly proud of the fact that I managed to write 700 post that contained about 99 1/2% original content. I look forward to doubling up that amount, but since it took me thirty-eight months to reach that total here, I'll be happy if I can hit 800 posts by the end of the year.

Realistically, I'll be happy no matter what my output totals, because doing this blog helps me enjoy not only the little things in life but has opened my eyes and caused me to look at the world with a clarity that I never really had before.

Blogging.

One of life's guilty little pleasures.