This post represents something special to me. This is a milestone reached, a distance covered, a length traveled.

This is post number One Thousand. For around two years now, I have been filling my blog with whatever falls out of my head. I began my first post by noting:

My goal here is to create an outlet where I can comment on the things that piss me off, interest me, amuse me, or will do any of those three things to my readers. [Ed.: Mind you, I had no readers when I wrote this!] In short, this will be a general interest blog for catholic (with a small c) interests. I welcome your participation in my little experiment.

I think, modest as my goals were, that I have mostly achieved them. Additionally, modest as my invitation was, it has mostly been accepted. Indeed, the comments make it all worthwhile. I still wrestle with why I blog or what I get out of it. I am way past caring that for some unknown reason I feel compelled to share some of my thoughts with a planet full of strangers and a small mini van full of people who I have come to share a friendship with. I am, however, pleased that my blog has also become a place where I memorialize -- what for many must be mundane but for me are -- the daily joys of sharing the lives of my extraordinary children and wife.

And I am, as I said, happy to receive the comments even if I tell myself that I would surely just keep on writing without them. Surely, I would. Surely I would derive the same pleasure from the writing that I do when I receive the largely thoughtful and intelligent comments I am fortunate enough to attract. Surely I am not lying to myself.

So, although I have said it before, thank you for the comments you leave. I am very appreciative of them.

One thousand posts seems like an awful lot to me. For a while there I thought maybe I was running out of things to say, running out of inspiration, losing my juice. My site stats bore silent sentinel to this as I have seen my average daily hits drop by a third. But recently I feel like it is all slowly creeping back in -- the pleasure derived simply from writing and expressing my thoughts, the having of the thoughts worth writing about, the caring. And the hits are slowly coming back up again. And the comments are still worth reading. So, I think that I pick option (A) on the menu: I will continue this little experiment and keep on writing.

And I will keep on writing here on MuNu where, courtesy of the gracious hosting by Pixy and thanks to the kind invitation from Helen, I have found a home and a place within a community of writers who I respect greatly. MuNu is a fabulous world and, if you haven't, I urge you to explore the MuNu links on my side bar. You will be richly rewarded by the experiment.

So, as numbers go, this is post one thousand, as I expect you have gathered. I am a bit humbled by what comes next. Many of the thousand were written elsewhere but since the first post I have put up here at MuNu, I have garnered some 3900+ comments. Since starting, I have had around 68,000 visits, many of them repeat offenders, of course, but we all know that recidivism is a problem not just for MuNu but for the world as a whole.

I guess I end this post here with a simple (as if I could do anything simply) thank you for sharing my life over the last 1000 posts. I think it has made my life richer and for that I am quite grateful. Here's to the next 1000!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:00 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 649 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Happy 1000, RP! And many more, we hope. Here something I liked from a book I took out of our little local library, Biz Stone's "Who Let the Blogs Out?": A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs: "It really doesn't matter if your blog is focused on a hobby, your work, politics, or just what you do during the course of the day. Blogging is information sharing, and the more you research and share, the more you gain expertise in your area of interest, even if that area is only "things that interest me." Every post you publish is added to your life's work, and that work is a window on your mind. Even if all you do is collect and publish bookmarks, the very links you choose to publish tip your hand. Blogging is an everyday practice of searching, thinking, and writing. There are many benefits to this exercise."

Posted by: Amy at March 24, 2006 03:07 PM (nUCsP)

2 Oh, no...thank you RP. We are more than happy to share this milestone. And stop calling us Shirley!!!!

Posted by: Wicked H at March 24, 2006 04:12 PM (BQhBn)

3 Awesome, my friend, just AWESOME! ; )

Posted by: Christina at March 24, 2006 04:29 PM (zJsUT)

4 Congratulations RP! We'll be happy to join you for the next 1000. I owe my munu digs to your invitation, and I thank you for that. You're absolutely right though, comments sometimes spur you on to create more, especially thoughtful intelligent comments such as the ones you get from your regulars here (not patting myself on the back, I'm talking about the rest of you). Cheers!

Posted by: Oorgo at March 24, 2006 05:13 PM (lM0qs)

5 Tahnks for all of the random pensees! And for seconding Linda's Munuvian nomination for me! You are the bomb, RP!

Posted by: Mark at March 24, 2006 09:43 PM (fdlRw)

6 Thank you, my friend, for the 1,000 posts. And the pictures that are worth a 1,000 words. And the 1,000 smiles. And the 1,000 ponderables. And, well, for just being you. xoxo

Posted by: Margi at March 25, 2006 01:53 AM (BRtaN)

7 Woo hoo!!! Congrats on the milestone! Lookin' forward to a thousand more. Then another thou. Then another...

Posted by: Tuning Spork at March 25, 2006 03:02 PM (JuNdj)

8 Congratulations! I just checked mine and I'm at 1040 and didn't even notice! Wait are my taxes done?

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at March 25, 2006 05:16 PM (DdRjH)

9 I think I came in at around post 850, but I've caught up and then some. Like Margi said, thanks for being you. And for sharing little pieces of yourself with us on an almost (ahem) daily basis. :-)

Posted by: Jennifer at March 26, 2006 03:07 PM (y4DOI)

10 I'm looking forward to reading the next thousand. Congratulations!

Posted by: nic at March 26, 2006 06:50 PM (l+W8Z)

11 People experience discomfort when faced with total honesty, but I am going to be brutally honest. When I got to the part in this post about you having 'achieved your goals', I wanted to slap you hard. Figured you were going to quit on us. But I read on and now, with relief, I raise my glass and voice with yours in a toast "Here's to the next 1000".

Posted by: Roberta S at March 27, 2006 11:45 AM (oL/oG)

12 I can't believe you're up to post 1000 already... we started at about the same time at Blogger, I believe I found you via the updated blogs. Quite random, really. But I've enjoyed reading your posts over the last couple of years and I'm glad you're willing to continue writing. Though I don't always leave a comment, only if I've actually got something to say, I read most of what you write. I''m glad you enjoy it.

Posted by: Hannah at March 27, 2006 02:21 PM (ImQx2)

13 Congrats my friend! I am glad to read that you'll continue writing because as long as you write I'll read. Or something like that. :-)

Posted by: Howard at March 27, 2006 05:31 PM (u2JaN)

14 Congratulations! Looking forward to reading many more postings in the future.

Posted by: JohnL at March 28, 2006 09:13 AM (Hs4rn)

15 Let me just add my exhortation for another thousand (and then another...) to my fellow co-commentators' Congrats RP!

Posted by: grammarqueen at March 28, 2006 11:26 AM (XzHwx)

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