Six years of blogging

When I was One, I had just begun.
When I was Two, I was nearly new.
When I was Three I was hardly me.
When I was Four, I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

- A. A. Milne, Now We Are Six

I put my first post up here six years ago.  It wasn't particularly good.  Looking back on it I find myself surprised to find the fledgling blogger refer to "Bore Patch".  In a sense, I hadn't become my blogging self.

I didn't know what this would turn out to be, even.  Certainly not six years and going on 9,000 posts (!) and almost 32,000 comments (!!).

What it's been is an often times saving grace during some difficult times.  It is an old saying of historians that happy is the land that has no history, and there's been rather more history these last six years than I'd like.

But through it all, it's been a great comfort that you keep coming back here.  I never imagined that this would be the greatest lesson of blogging, those six years back, and I'm profoundly grateful for that.

I've also met a bunch of you in real life, and made some deep friendships which I never would have known had I not set sail for that terra incognita aboard the good ship Blogger.  One of those bloggers now blogs here, adding some shooting and martial arts posts that had been sadly lacking.  There's a parable in that - we're none of us as strong as all of us, and I don't say that in the creepy fascist* way but rather in a very grateful personal way.  Thank you all for coming here, for being part of something that is far bigger than any one of us.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone who thinks and feels with us, and who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

- Goethe

* The fasces was an axe surrounded by a bunch of sticks, used as a symbol of office by the ancient Romans.  Each stick by itself was easy to break, but all of the sticks together made up a formidable strength.  Mussolini was quite taken by this metaphor, in a creepy way.  I'm also taken with the metaphor, but in quite a different - and personal - way.