Day 31: Somebody to Love

We’ve reached the end of another May, the sixth consecutive one I’ve written daily posts. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I chose this month way back when I started this since it’s so close to what can feel like the longest and most stressful month of the school year. I figured forcing myself to write something new each day would both distract me from anything unpleasant I had going on that would be better off left at school, and would add just enough positive pressure as I struggled to keep up with the pace to keep it moving along. 

I’m happy with how this month turned out. First, some statistics: Over the course of these 31 posts, including the carefully-worded one I’m composing right now, I will have written a total of 25,000 words. Not yet including anything that happens with today’s post, the May blog posts have had a total of 2,866 page views. By comparison, the first month I did this had a total of 681 page views, which was less than my four most popular posts from this month combined. In fact, the top three posts from this month made it into the top 10 most read posts, for a blog that has existed since 2009. 

I’m happy to see the month as successful as it was. After all, one of the reasons I spend as much time writing these posts is the hope that people will read them. In a lot of cases though, the motivation for doing this is to get something out of them myself. I’ve got one of these weird writer brains going on, where the words and ideas never seem to completely find a way to shut themselves off. It can become bothersome at times, so writing a blog has been a useful outlet when it comes to unloading and sorting through all of that. Sometimes you just need to clean house a bit, you know? If it works out that doing that ever gives someone else something to consider, all the better. 

And all of this is said without mentioning the primary reason I started the blog in the first place — to practice my writing. Looking back and comparing some of the earliest posts to the most recent ones, I think it was a good idea.

A lot of what I’ve written here this month has been birthday centered, which probably makes it difficult to convince people that I truly don’t get wrapped up in my birthday all that much. I do, however, spend a lot of time reflecting on my place in the world and where I am in life, and reaching a landmark birthday like fifty seemed like a natural time to do that. This doesn’t mean I necessarily figured anything out or reached any grand conclusions, or even have any better idea of what I’m supposed to do with life after fifty than I did with life before. It does make retirement start to seem real. And it makes me wonder a little about how much time I have left, and what the time will be like, and what I’ll be able to accomplish with it. 

Starting with June though? I’ll probably just start looking for a new dog.