Two Hundred Posts

This is post #201 for this blog and as such seemed like as good a time as any to pause and reflect on the ground covered thus far.

There are plenty of blogs with more than two hundred posts. Heck, I’ve written some between authoring most of The A Cappella Blog, and my weekly column for 411mania.com. But in terms of producing quality, substantive posts on a regular basis (every two weeks), without breaks for nearly seven years and counting, during a period that included three interstate moves, completing two graduate degrees, getting married, and the first year and a half of being a father--well, I feel pretty good about keeping up with this blog.

When I started this blog, I wasn’t entirely sure what it would be. That is, in fact, a part of why I started it and why I’ve kept up with it: because it can be a platform for whatever I want for it to be. The nature of this blog has been largely oriented toward short personal essays or related experiments. As I’ve published more with literary journals, this is, at times, a refreshing place for me to engage with material that’s not necessarily of literary merit, to indulge in writing idiosyncrasies rather than trying to polish them out, and not worrying about serving any audience beyond myself and the folks who both follow me on social media and bother to click on the link to a given post.

For today, I arbitrarily picked ten posts from over the years to highlight. These are ten of my favorites, and ten that may be a good introduction for anyone interested in exploring the archives without weeding through two hundred posts and counting.

Whether this is your first time visiting this blog, you’re a twice-monthly reader, or someplace in between, thanks for spending this time with me, and rest assured this is not the end.

Learning to Read (2014): This is a post about my relationship with reading and how I learned to do it, but more so it’s about my conflicted relationship with my father and how I process it from an adult perspective.

Taking a Swing (2015): This post is a meditation on not being able to hit a baseball, and how it relates to concepts of masculinity and family.

Make the Choice (2016): This post went live the morning of my wedding day, and investigates the story and reasons behind pursuing a life with Heather.

A Chemistry Lesson (2015): This is a relatively experimental post with a fine line between fiction and non-fiction, revisiting a weekend when I was seventeen years old and stayed home from my grandfather’s funeral in favor of preparing for the AP Chemistry exam.

You Were Born (2018): This is the most recent post listed here, and recounts the day when my son was born.

My Italian Family (2013): While the blog often turns to my family life, and particularly my youth, this post centers on my relationship with my other family—my best friend’s nuclear family that I spent about as much time with as my own for a period of years.

Fear of Darkness (2014): This post moves through time from seeing gorillas in shadows as a kid, to interacting with a cat, to becoming the subject of someone else’s fear in the dark.

A New Prayer (2014): I’ve never been a religious person, but that doesn’t necessarily imply an absence of spirituality. This post looks at my personal history with variants of prayer.

Conversations About Angels (2013): My relationship with Heather was still new when we discussed angels we’d encountered in our lives. This post followed.

Minor Key Christmas (2012): Each year I’ve written a post that deals with Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday, though my conception of it has changed a great deal over time. This, the first holiday post for this blog, looks at the sadder side of Christmas through the lens of sadder songs and people lost.