Sometimes the title says it all--this blog is about my travels, adventures and life-it's a roller coaster ride...
I wrote the above words about four years, one month ago, and 400 posts ago. I didn't mark my 100th or 300th post, but this feels a bit more significant and it provided an opportunity for some reflection. For those of you who were keeping track, I suppose that my true 400th post came in the last week but I needed to to take down some posts and images that no longer belonged to me. This is close enough and I will celebrate and reflect a bit.
To say something is about your "travels, adventures, and life is both deceptively simple but also quite accurate--it the past week or so I have read and looked at all of my posts. By my count, I have posted just under a thousand photos, or at least that is how many are in my Picassa album where the posted photos get stored. I think that there may be more--when I changed formats a few months ago, I think I might have misplaced a few. Still, that is an average of 20 published photos a month. Not exactly newspaper output, but sometimes they were the only photos I took in that whole month or months were the few that I posted. I am not sure how to explain how important that sometimes has been for me. I would not be the first photographer who takes and publishes photos sometimes just to prove to themselves that they do exist and are alive. I think that in reviewing them people (and I, too) would find some to be pure drivel. But I also think that there a more than a few that moved me and meant something to me, and perhaps also to the people who either regular or accidental readers. I wonder what ones are "reader favorites?" Please let me know, if you have have a moment.
I sometimes do treat this as a photo blog, but I have shared much more than photos. About a year ago, I tried to print out the whole blog, but stopped after about 800 printed pages and I still had more than a year to go--certainly the length of the printed blog is more than1,500 pages. Illustrated pages, thank heavens! And the type is pretty big, too, so when you re-read it, it doesn't quite seem like you are reading Les Mis. Like the photos, some of the words have been strung together like so much popcorn and are inconsequential. But also like the photos, some of the words do mean something to me and perhaps to those who have read them. Again, I wonder which ones were the most important or valued?
These words have recorded happy times and some incredibly sad difficult times. Sometimes I am cryptic to shield the readers and no doubt myself from what I really want to say. I have laughed and I have cried when I have written what I have--as I read them, I sometimes do the same. My MBTI scores are evident in far more posts than I like to admit, especially the great big blazing super sensitive, "F" indicator. That I write this alone, and often for just myself doesn't exactly hide the "I" part of me, either.
Psycho-analysis aside, what I do find is that these 400+ posts (I have to count the deleted ones--they were important) do provide a pretty good record of my life these past four years. They document me moving across the country, twice, and tell of jobs won and lost. The mountains I have climbed or not climbed, the oceans and cities and sunsets that I have seen show up as do the water falls and flowers (and many other things) that I have stood before in awe and wonder. Three trips to Europe, the last more wonderful and exciting than the first, are documented as are the day-to-day neighborhood wanderings of a lost (but sometimes found) soul. To me, the people I have loved are evident in so many posts, though rarely named or pictured, a regret that I recognize with this reflection. Still, they are recorded, both in the good times and sometimes when and as they pass from the pages and my life or their/my role and place changes.
There is no doubt that I am a verbal, text based processor, and if these thousands of pages haven't convinced you of that, I can give you a few people to call to confirm this. Readers of these pages have seen me process much of what has happened to me these past four years. Sometimes it might have been in how a photograph reflected or sometimes even hid my mood or thoughts. Other times it was hidden in those cryptic posts where I was asking myself or others questions or just wondering about life. Other times it is far from hidden and extremely visible--I was happy or I was sad or I was curious or sometimes, I probably knew and realized too much. I have realized how important blogging is for me, for these purposes among others especially when I realize(d) that I miss it. It has been a different kind of therapy for me, no less important than any other kind and certainly complimentary. That of course is self-indulgent and as I have noted more than 10 times, (yep, I looked and kept track) writing one's thoughts for readers known and unknown is self-indulgent. Sometimes its asking a lot. Thanks for that.
Most of all, these pages do form a record of sorts of my travels and adventures and even my mis-adventures. And, I guess, of my life. Thanks for sharing all these things with me, and please, keep reading, whether accidentally or on purpose.
And please, comment and share your thoughts. As I wrote so long ago, this all works better if it is a bit interactive.
No comments:
Post a Comment