Twenty Years Into It

Today is my 20th 'blogiversary.' Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these twenty years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals

daily kept.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, locally and in far-away places, some in person.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings years ago and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Blog on!

I've missed only a few days in these twenty years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals

daily kept.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, locally and in far-away places, some in person.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings years ago and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Blog on!

Comments

[Malcolm Pollack]

Congratulations, Bill! And thanks.

[BV]

Thanks, Malcolm. Did you see Maqrk Levin tonight with Leo Terrell and VDH? I know you don't like Levin's radio show but his Sat and Sun night Fox performances are usually excellent.

[Vito B. Caiati]

Thank you again, Bill, for the intellectual and spiritual nourishment that you have provided to me for much of this journey.

Spero per altri vent'anni!

Vito

[ostrich]

Congrats from the Ostrich

[Dmitri]

Malcolm said it just right: congratulations and thanks Bill!

[BV]

Thank you, gentlemen!

Vito: anch'io!

[mharko]

I'll add my $.02. It won't cover what I've received from getting to read your blog these last 12 years or so since discovering you, but I cannot let this milestone go by without joining the chorus of gratitude. You add value and do so gratis! Thank you, Maverick Philosopher!

[Anthony Flood]

Congratulations, Bill.

Where did the decades go? I anticipated your 20th when I celebrated mine in January: AnthonyFlood.com: An Emerald Anniversary Retrospective. Neither of us could have predicted what would transpire in the intervening years or what positions we'd take. (Well, maybe you could have (:^D)).

Tony

[BV]

Tony,

I just re-read for the second or third time your meaty retrospective. One of the things that attracted me to your inaugural site years ago was your presentation of the work of currently neglected philosophers, a few of whom I learned about first from you, John Deck, for example.

I hope to revisit some of our early debates, as time permits, in particular the one concerning philosophy and misosophy.

More to say, but gotta go. Old Sol is about to appear and the mountain bike beckons.

[Ed Farrell]

Congratulations, Bill. I always enjoy your posts--the political camaraderie and the intellectual challenge. May they long continue!

[Karl]

Congrats, Bill!

[BV]

Ed and Karl,

Thank you for reading!