The Famous 2500th Post

On 4 June 2014 A Shroud of Thoughts tuned 10 years old. Today I am making my 2500th post, this post. To be honest, both milestones have me a bit gobsmacked. When I first started the blog about ten and a half years ago I never dreamed I would be writing it for so long or that I would produce so many posts. I know of only a handful of blogs that have reached or are close to reaching the 10 year mark (I discussed them the other day). I have no idea how many blogs have reached 2500 posts.

As to how A Shroud of Thoughts has survived about 10  and a half years and 2500 posts, I think most bloggers worth their salt could do it. I think more than anything else it simply a case of making a commitment to one's blog. When I first started A Shroud of Thoughts I decided that I would write a minimum of three posts a week. My reason for doing so is that I had noticed too many blogs in 2004 that only had a post every so many weeks or even months, and yet others that had apparently abandoned. I did not want my blog to go that route so I settled upon three posts a week as a means of keeping A Shroud of Thoughts alive. For the past ten years, then, I have made at least three posts a week. I won't say that every single one of the posts was necessarily good--I rather suspect many of them were probably rubbish--but at least I wrote something. As Nora Roberts once said, "I can fix a bad page, but I can’t fix a blank one.”

Of course, to maintain three posts a week one also has to blog when, well, he or she really does not feel like blogging. In the past ten and a half years I have written in the wake of a fairly bad break up, problems at work, the loss of  a job, and the death of my best friend, not to mention various bouts of the cold, flu, and other illnesses. During such periods I generally only produced three to four posts a week, but at no point did I stop blogging. In some respects, at least for the serious blogger, I guess blogging is a bit like a regular job--one can take a few days off, but at no point can one afford to stop for weeks at a time.

Beyond my own commitment to A Shroud of Thoughts, I think the other thing that has allowed the blog to last so long is simply its readers. I feel like I have been very fortunate to have faithful readers who have followed the blogs for quite some time, some of them from its earliest years. There aren't necessarily a lot of them--A Shroud of Thoughts is hardly The Huffington Post--but there are enough that it makes me feel that writing this blog has been worthwhile. I don't know if the blog would have lasted as long as it has if not for the loyalty of my readers. I certainly appreciate them!

To wrap this post up, then, I would like to thank the many of you who have read A Shroud of Thoughts over the years, as well as my fellow bloggers who have offered their support over the years. I honestly don't think the blog would have achieved 2500 posts without you!