Happy 10th birthday to whatever this is

Ten years ago this week, I shot an arrow named Murphy’s Craw into the blogosphere.

I did this some months after accepting a buyout from the newspaper job I’d held for 30 years.

Although I was a copy editor at the paper, and although I still do freelance editing and proofreading, I’ve always considered myself to be primarily a writer.

In my youth I was inspired by folks like Robert Benchley, who had worked at newspapers and magazines. From Benchley it was a short trip to the worlds of S.J. Perelman, James Thurber, E.B. White, Dorothy Parker and many other folks.

And even before I made Mr. Benchley’s acquaintance, there was Rob Petrie, who wasn’t really a real writer but a character played on TV by Dick Van Dyke. Rob was able to hang out all day with other funny folks like Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell. Gee, writing sure looked like fun!

During my time at the paper I was occasionally permitted to write humorous articles that sometimes were published. This made me feel even more like Benchley and his colleagues.

So after I left the paper, I figured I’d start this blog, and I figured that it would function like a newspaper column.

Has it worked out that way?

Well, not quite.

I found out that it’s hard to come up with something new to say every day. Or even just three times a week. This unpleasant insight gave me a new respect for the columnists whose stuff I’d worked on at the newspaper.

Take 47 weeks (assuming five weeks off for vacation), multiply it by three times a week and and multiply the result by 10 times a year, and you have 1,410 newspaper columns.

During that same period, I’ve produced 362 blog posts, including this one.

And this year alone I’ve produced only four posts, again including this one.

So there’s obviously been a whole lot of slacking going on.

Of course there is a difference. The folks whose columns I edited had considerably more motivation — namely the fear of starving.

But that’s really no excuse.

Nor is the fact that I had a really bad summer, which included a catastrophic accident and the resulting death of someone very close to me. Not to mention that since that someone’s funeral, three close friends have also passed away. I guess as one gets older, life seems more and more like a deadly game of dominoes.

My relatively paltry output raises the question of whether Murphy’s Craw should continue.

I invite your opinions on this.

In the meantime, I’d like to think that I have more to say. Then again, is it a lot more, and is it worth saying?

I can’t tell you because I don’t have the answer yet.

So for now I’ll write on, blogging against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past — which is where I get a lot of my ideas anyway.

Thanks again for listening.