Yup. If you total up all of the numbers in the blog archive section over there to the right, this will be the thousandth post.
That’s a very large number. It’s led me to think deep weighty thoughts about this blog and why it exists and why it is such a large part of my life. It has turned out that the blog is not some hair-brained idea that I thought I would abandon long ago….with the photos and video it has morphed into something much more than that.
Why?: I’ve never had a hobby or interest I’ve stayed with like this one. I’m prone, ruthlessly prone, to not completing a project (there are a legion of home-improvement projects that speak to this and I’ve noticed the same thing at work…it’s much better if somebody comes in to finish off some of my projects with a deliberate focus instead of me slowly bring the ship into port…anyway…)
But I do this…and sometimes fall behind and feel guilty about that, but more often than not I get back to it and the blog is a fairly accurate family history. When I’m travelling, I find myself going back and rereading blog entries from years ago….some changes to the blog have happened because of that (I used to embed, and then link, to video….now I always have a picture from that video that acts as a link. It is more work, but looks better in the end.)
But I still haven’t answered why? And trying to answer why has lead me to a realization about the last five to ten years (and the upcoming seven to eleven)……these are the best days of my life. I look forward to nothing more than a weekend full of events and watching the boys give it their all in one way or another. Life may be chaotic, and there are disappointments, but you couldn’t get me to trade watching Matthew in a pouring rainstorm for almost anything else right now. I like watching the Steelers score, and can watch Santonio score that touchdown in the endzone over and over and over…..that feeling is nothing compared to watching Christopher grab a critical rebound in basketball, or Kevin and Ross upset the #2 seed to move into the semi-finals, or Matthew doing just about everything and anything. It just does not get better than that.
And in the end, I want to remember, and relive, these times. My memory sucks….but the words, the picture, they videos, they remind me. We’ve been to some awesome places, and we do so much while we are there that things get hazy in the distance of time; I’ve more than once gone back here as a reference on what we did or where we ate or to remind Suzanne and myself about how a certain event happened.
The Good: I was always worried that there would be a ton of people on this big bad internet who would find this blog and stop here and in some way the blog would come back to be an embarrassment to the boys. Because that’s all you hear, don’t post anything on the internet.
Turns out that hasn’t happened, the blog is lucky to see five visitors a day, and some of them are because of some very strange search criteria (‘buckle fracture’ has gotten BNS more than a few visitors).
So far there has been only one consistent visitor other than family (….that visitor is a high school student or parent who did a search about quiz bowl and hit the post I did back in January with pictures of Kevin and the quiz bowl team). I told Kevin that someone was visiting the blog, and he didn’t care very much one way or the other ( best thing I ever did…set up the free tracking software). I am surprised I’ve never gotten a stray hit from a soccer parent….or off of facebook (I list the blog in my ‘info’)
I’d like to think that someday Kevin, Fric, and Frac will enjoy this trip down memory lane. I know that already I appreciate the memories I’ve recorded here. That’s enough for me.
(one of the reasons the pictures are bigger now on the blog is my understanding of how they look when they are turned into ‘print’….it takes more time to make them larger, but, it’s definitely worth it)
The Bad: Suzanne almost never visits the blog (“Why would I go look at it? I’m living it….”) You know the saying that history is written by the winner? I’m sure that years from now, when she does read it, my version of events is going to differ slightly from her memories. I don’t ‘win’ these type of disagreements much right now….but I know I KNOW that since I have it in print, my version will win out. One of these days.
So yeah, that’s bad. But it’s amusing bad.
What is really bad, and has made me reconsider the whole blog deal over the last six months, is my belief that the blog is a substitute for real human interaction for parts of my family. Took me a while to sort out how I felt about this….especially since I am convinced that this blog has enabled or enhanced that problem.
It’s easy to click on the BNS bookmark once or twice a day. Real easy.
Finally decided against turning the blog ‘private’, that wouldn’t change anything. So yeah, that’s bad. And sad.
The Future: Well, I had more posts in 2012 to date than in 2011, so, it’s not like there’s been a drop off in production. Still trying to figure out how in the world I posted 242 times in 2008. That seems unachievable now, especially with all of the video that is uploaded on the many different Shutterfly share sites.
But the more the boys do the more there is to post about. Keeping up with Kevin’s tennis was some work (I really like that scanning-in the scorelines in the paper is a great way of ‘scrapbooking’ them for the future) but pretty useful for me; it was an easy place to go and check what the score of previous matches were and remind myself who we played.
It will be interesting to see how long posts with Kevin updates are feasible; seems very strange that we are now thinking in terms of ‘last’ events at home (Suzanne commented that there was only one more Halloween left until Kevin was ‘gone’).
Books: I know I’ve talked here about the blogbooker application I found on the internet. I printed out the files from the blog (five files, one for each year from 2007 to 2011). The printout, in color, 8.5x11, double sided, the blog in two columns, comes in at over 500 pages. I’m currently trying to figure out how to bind it so that I have a permanent record of all of this. Hard-cover doesn’t seem to be an option, but, apparently soft-cover through Kinko’s is only about $20 each. Will have to be two books at that point. Looks like 2012 might have to be its own book too…..just the first half (where the page above comes from) weighs in at 140 pages.
