Thursday, September 3, 2009

My 500th Wiggle!

Well! It is my 500th blog post! Can you believe it? I certainly can. I feel every single one of those 500 entries deep within my bones. To celebrate, here is a cheerleader thing that I made:

She is cheering me on to victory. This craft came from a kit that cost $1. Apparently, if you spend $1 on a kit, then you get a bunch of yarn and felt and instructions that say “Make the thing look like it does in the picture.”

Anyhoo, I thought since it was the 500th blog we could look back in time a little bit. I started this blog in Seattle on Jan. 2, 2007, which probably aggravated me at the time cause I’m the kind of person that would have preferred to start on the first. Ah well. For the first five or so months, only my dear friend Matthew knew about the blog. Things I wrote about when only Matthew read my blog: books, spam email, things I ate for lunch, beverages I consumed, my horrible knee injury of 2007.

Matthew eventually told me that being the only reader was creepy, and so then I started telling other people. When other people started reading it, I started writing about other things, such as concerts and readings I went to, things that happened that day in history, Bryan Adams music videos, movies and television. Plus, the introduction of special guest bloggers! And I learned how to put pictures up!

Hey! Then do you remember when I decided to up and move back across the country? Oh, man I do. Cause I blogged all about it, from my annoying landlady to going to post office 25 times to mail all my books to the big drive cross country. Then I lived in Candler for two months, answering phones at Dad’s office, so I had plenty of time to blog blog blog. Mary Henry and Brad helped get me to my goal of 200 posts in one year, setting a deadly dangerous precedent for the next year.

And speaking of the next year, that’s when I got a job and moved to Atlanta! In Atlanta, I’ve pretty much blogged about things I’ve always blogged about, such as concerts and books and trips and award shows and pictures and whatnot, but in Atlanta I’ve had the additional advantage of writing about Chick-fil-a and its wondrous and creepy bad spelling cows.

Hey, speaking of the Chick-fil-a cows, yesterday I went to Chick-fil-a for lunch, and a guy dressed in the cow costume was in the store! He made a small child cry. A middle-aged man got really excited though, and whipped out his fancy phone for pictures with the cow. I was in a hurry, so I couldn’t stick around and give that cow a piece of my mind on his spelling habits, but that’s okay. I think if I had gotten much closer to that cow I would have cried like the small child. That cow was very big and wanted hugs.

So, several weeks ago, I realized that I was coming up on my 500th Wiggle. And I thought to myself, what sort of special thing should I do to celebrate this occasion? Immediately, the thought came to me, as if from somewhere outside my body: “That’s the post where you quit the blog. That’s your last post.” And I was like, whoa, that’s weird, I wasn’t even thinking about quitting the blog. But really, as soon as I had that thought, I knew it was the right thought. This is the last post.

Let me explain why this is the last post. When I started this blog, I was somewhat frustrated in my job. I was in a funk and needed a creative outlet. And the blog filled that need and became something special and fun in ways that I could have never imagined. It’s nice to hear that other people have enjoyed it, but at the end of the day, I didn’t really care if anyone read it. I wrote all the entries as if only I would read them, and I think that experience made me more creative and observant and disciplined in ways that I would be lacking in if I hadn’t kept the blog.

However, I am in a much different place now than I was when I started the blog For one thing, I’m like 33 months older. But I live in a different city and I have a much different job, one where I write something daily. It can be really hard to read and write for 8 or 9 hours and then come home and muster up the energy to read and write some more. But lately, when I do come home with that energy to write and create, I’m not inspired to pound out a blog entry. I’ve been trying to do the kind of writing that eventually becomes a short story or a book. I don’t know if any of it will ever become a proper short story or a published book, but that’s what I’m working on now.

I just tried to find a blog I read once where a writer explained why she quit her blog – it’s like, you start a blog because you love to write and see it as a gateway drug to bigger and better writing. But you never get to the big stuff because you’re so distracted by the blog. So that’s basically why I’m quitting the blog. Also, I find the internet more and more disappointing every day and it’s probably best I stay off it.

Anyhoo, I have no idea who reads the blog anymore. But thanks for reading. And please know that you can always email me or pick up the phone and chat. In some ways, that would be a really nice thing for me. When you write a blog, people kinda know what you’re up to, but you have no idea what other people are up to. It’s a very weird one-way mirror. But again, thanks for reading.

And now, to symbolize the end of the blog, here is a picture of me on a bulldozer, symbolically running it into the ground, but also digging up the fresh dirt that symbolizes a new beginning or something like that.

And here are some posts I consider my greatest wiggles:
First blog: http://iwiggleitjustalittlebit.blogspot.com/2007/01/in-bloghouse.html

Knee injury: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8
Bryan Adams: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

Why I am warped, Part II: Interviews with family: Dad, Mom, George, William, Dad again


Special guest bloggers/guest: Brad and Mary Henry, Matthew, George #1, George #2, George #3, William

Popetacular: #1, #2, #3, #4

Fun with stuffed animals: #1, #2, #3, #4