Three hundred thousand.

That's an unfathomable number to me for just about any context.

This little blog just passed that number for pageviews, a few months short of celebrating three years of blogging.

I know I've written before that I started the effort just to keep busy. After being laid off in May 2020, I knew I needed that. In addition to applying for jobs most of the day, I needed fun writing, something more personal than endless job applications. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, I worked 14-hour days during the week and 10-hour days during the weekend. I've never minded a little bit of work. Then I was laid off after a newspaper merger and kicked out of my apartment at the newspaper. Within a couple days, for some reason I still don't understand, I had 20,000 pageviews, enough for The New York Times to report on the blog.

I wrote a post everyday except for a week of deep depression that January and then most days for some time thereafter. A new job intervened, as did access to the internet many days. I'm working on getting better than that.

My previous blogging effort had received 55 pageviews, I think 45 of them mine.

Here we are nearly three years later and almost 400 posts. I've tried to keep the promise I made to myself: Be brutally honest, even when it hurt. So I posted about ideal jobs lost, applications ignored by fast food restaurants, deep depression.

Some nights I winced while editing but what's the point of writing if it's not honest?

And now I'm no longer homeless and still an editor. One out of two. That's a .500 batting average that won't get me in the baseball hall of fame. If there's a blog hall of fame, I won't get in there, either. There are hundreds of blogs that get in the millions of pageviews.

But you know what? That 300,000 number makes me happy. Even on a day like today where I'm suffering from the effects of depression, my life partner.

I've contemplated in the past when the blog should wrap up.

Not as long as people take time out of their lives to read what I write.

I remember almost everyday what my fourth-grade teacher said to me. When I said in class I wanted to be a writer, she said, "Mr. Jackson, no one will pay to read what you write."

I get to do that for a living as a journalist while I've not made any money off this little passion project. But, yeah, I get paid to read and write for a living.

And I have you readers.

That's pretty cool.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Peace unto Ukraine and peace and more posts for you my brothers and sisters.