DECEMBER 10, 2022 – When I started this project on April 14, 2018, I had high hopes that I could run round the writing track daily for 200 days. Based on a self-imposed daily limit of 500 words, 200 days would net 100,000 words—the equivalent of a modest length book (not including preface, index and illustrations). I’d have 500,000 words under my belt after two years and nine months . . . and so on to a million words in five years (I’ve recently increased (furtively) my daily word limit by 10%). But who’s counting? My blog isn’t a competition!
The question is why? Why maintain a daily blog? Why not reserve it for special occasions, such as when life involves a health crisis, followed by months of treatment, culminating in a procedure that’s straight out of science fiction literature? Or . . . to recount the odyssey of a lifetime, thanks to the suggestion of our son Byron; or . . . to capture impressions of nature or memorialize great people in my life; or . . . to rant and rave about politics—to stir up current readers and to amuse future ones, when “yesterday seems so far away”?
I have no better answer to Why a daily blog? than does anyone else who shares in writing their thoughts and observations. If pressed, however, I’d say that the daily writing discipline bears a likeness to daily physical exercise and . . . fishing.
In the case of exercise, conventional wisdom urges that routine and regularity are the foundation of a good exercise program. You don’t sign up for a fitness center, give out your credit card information for automatic monthly debits, then stretch and sweat only randomly. Neither do you lay off for a day: Skip one session and missing another is all too easy until your attendance becomes sporadic.
Just as lifting weights works the muscles and smacking a ball around a squash court improves agility, writing exercises the cognitive process of assembling thoughts and using language to express them. The more often a person shows up at the fitness center, the better physical conditioning s/he achieves. Likewise, the more a person writes, the more the brain lights up—at least that’s a theory that motivates me.
But what about blog writing and fishing? Posting daily requires constant vigilance for material to feed the beast. Success at fishing also requires that you always have your line and lure in the water. Like the angler I used to be, now as a daily blogger I’m always casting about for subject matter. Sometimes I catch and release a sunny, and every so often I “win” a walleye worth keeping and eating. Occasionally, I’ll even take a deep sea expedition and haul aboard a swordfish good for a feast, with a week’s worth of leftovers. But if I were writing—or fishing—less often than daily, I’d be letting too many “big ones” get away.
At the 1300-mark, I feel energized to continue this daily routine and keep fishing the waters of the world as I experience it. In observing this occasion, I thank my readers for their participation at the writing gym—and fishing hole. Your efforts in reading motivate mine in writing.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
