1000 Blog Posts
So…this is blog post 1000. Crazy to think and yet at the same time I’m pretty late to the game for someone who started blogging in September of 2005. A quick look of others who I know started blogs around that same time. Dean Shareski is at 2800+ blog posts and Clarence Fisher is 3100 and counting. Both making this 1000th blog post look like nothing!
I still remember setting up this blog in my computer lab in Shanghai. I downloaded WordPress and followed the directions to install it on the little server I was running at the time. I remember coming to the page that asked to name the blog and not knowing what to call it. It’s not something you think about usually until you are faced with it. So I looked around the room and there in the corner was “The Thinking Stick” a wooden bat my friend had given me and that I used when teaching. Mr. U was always known for walking around the room with “The Thinking Stick” when we were doing some really deep thinking.
So that’s how this blog got its name. If I knew that day that my professional life would forever be changed would I name it something else? Absolutely! But you don’t know…..you don’t know if anyone is going to read your blog. Even now some 9 years later I don’t know if anyone reads this. The difference is I blog for me now, for my thoughts, for my own reflection and allow myself to think through things and to share my own learning with anyone that happens upon it.
So 1000 blog posts and probably the turning point for me was this blog post here. I still go back and read it every once and awhile just to remind myself of sitting on the couch and writing that one….a moment for sure.
Not that I have this out of the way…..I can go back to blogging about stuff that actually matters
Huge milestone Jeff!
You’ve got a year on me, but I’ve blogged far less frequently. Still, I love the process.
Just wanted to say thanks for contributing to my learning! You were one of the first bloggers I added to my reader (I think it was called Bloglines or something like that), and I have truly enjoyer learning with and from you over the past 8-ish years. Looking forward to more!
Dave
Thanks David,
And thanks for sticking around for 8 plus years. Ah…Bloglines the first RSS reader that we all loved.
I do owe it all to the community of course. Without people reading, commenting and pushing my own thinking right here on the blog I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’m forever grateful!
Hi Jeff,
First year of blogging for me , but reading ur blog and doing the COETAIL has really been a game changer for me. Tks hope to meet at Yokohama Gafe.
Thanks Dwayne! See you in Yokohama!
This just shows that we’re getting old and have been around long enough to see blogging stumble around, explode, apparently die in favour of other mediums and now, begin to return in a more reflective meaningful way.
I still think it’s a worthwhile space to be in.
Couldn’t agree more!
Hope all is well in the north!
I read it. So you know someone is reading it.
In seven years of blogging I still have less than 500
Congratulations Jeff! You need to realize that you’re the “grandfather” of a lot of blogs now—the Coetail blogs! So, multiply that 1000 by 1000, actually.
I’ve never taken a look but I just did. I’ve written 87 posts during the 18 months of the Coetail program (need to make that 88 as 88 is a lucky number for the Chinese!), 17 pages, and there are 312 comments on my Coetail blog.
I agree with Dwayne that blogging was a game-changer for me.
I clicked on the “game changer” post link that you wrote about, above. I remember reading it when I first started Coetail 18 months ago. I remember how your honesty really struck me through that post. It made such a big impression on me, that I remember that blogpost, still. I just read it again, and found it amusing to read my comment that I wrote over a year ago underneath. At that time, I was such a newbie blogger and commenter that I hit the wrong “reply” button and my comment looks like a reply to another commenter. Oh well… It’s there. 🙂
It’s funny that we never can quite predict what sort of impact our blogging has on others. I recall Clint Hamada writing a blogpost saying, “Obvious to you, but amazing to others!”.
Indeed, that’s how blogging is. We write about things that are obvious to us, but amazing to others.
I had the privilege of meeting Mr David Truss last week when I stopped by in Vancouver. I had enjoyed reading his blog and commenting back and forth with him over the past year. You assigned all of us Coetailers to put his blog into our RSS. It was a natural next step to meet him face2face. It was interesting that he said he wasn’t sure of the impact of the blogging he was doing regarding the B.C. Teacher’s strike. I found that quite remarkable as it had an impact on me, and I don’t even live in Canada! So, young or old in blogging, we can’t ever estimate our impact and we are plagued with self-doubts a lot of the time. We write for ourselves and if someone else benefits, it’s icing on the cake.
Congrats again for being the grandfather of a million+ blogposts.
~Vivian
I remember when we wrote our blogs on tablets. Stone tablets. With a chisel.
RSS was much more difficult with stone tablets. I think they called it RHS really hard syndication.
I was reading Dean and Brendan when I was a child. I think the feed was called “Flintstones”.
Hey Jeff
You started me blogging, about a year after you started yourself…
I still read yours, and get a lot out of it. Still in Shanghai too…
Congrats, and I’ve always thought the thinking stick was a great name for a blog like yours.
Cheers
Kimbra