I marvel every day at the fact that somebody is still reading this stuff.
When I first started even having a blog, it was a chore to post something even monthly, mostly becuase I knew no one was reading it. If you go through the oldest posts on this site, they are actually imported from before dannypeck.net existed and they were hidden away on a wordpress account that no one knew of.
This was set up initially with a dual purpose; firstly, keeping everyone at home updated on my Ecuador excursion in both the laziest and least obtrusive way possible (I didn’t have to send it out to various people, and they didn’t have to read it unless they were intentional enough to come here). Secondly, that it could just be a part of my journal when it came down to events.
I had a vague sense that Billy was reading it and sharing the funny bits with the choir at First Baptist. I knew my parents would read it. What I was not expecting was to come home and people I hadn’t even thought to give my URL to would be telling me how phenomenal a writer I was (they must not read much else). Even weirder was about three quarters of the way through the summer when Cameron asked me a question, and then- both of us too pressed for time for her to hear the long version of my answer- said “Oh, I’ll just read about it on your blog,” which was when I realized that people around me were reading it (and actually knew what I wrote about them).
Getting comments, sometimes here and sometimes on facebook when the entries are automatically imported over there, has been really good though. Just knowing someone read an entry (despite being something hard to get used to after seven years of nobody EVER visiting my websites) makes writing it seem useful. It also is nice to know both that my thoughts can help other people out, and that somebody else might be going through the same thing.
I don’t think I’m a great writer. Especially here. This is some of the least-planned writing I have ever done and continue to do in my life. I use the word “I” too much. If I wasn’t totally lazy, I’d count how many paragraphs start with that letter. But despite that, I know and appreciate that someone will eventually read each of these posts, even if it’s Jerry just checking my spelling.
So, like the post below, this is just a thank you.
