Four Candles on My Blog’s Birthday Cake

Today is my blog’s fourth birthday. So I’m going to indulge in a few reflections.

Things I’m Grateful For

I’m grateful for the many organizations whose research and advocacy make my posts possible. I’m awed by the quantity and quality of what they produce.

I’m also grateful for the inspiration they provide. Huge challenges. Disappointing results sometimes. Partial victories more often than total wins. So much effort to preserve what’s been won.

I’m sometimes inclined to feel that advocacy is a hopeless labor — forever rolling the boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again.

But then I see how the advocates I admire draw strength from their core values and keep on keepin’ on, while always looking for ways to do more and better. I’m uplifted by their unquenchable spirit.

I’m grateful to the issue experts who take time to answer my questions — and sometimes to send me even more information.

They’ve enabled me to avoid blunders and to tackle points I’d otherwise evade, knowing I’d be likely to blunder. Not claiming I’ve made no blunders, however.

I’m very grateful to the organizations that have sort of taken me into the fold, even though I’m just a lone blogger. The feeling that I’m in some manner part of a like-minded community has become a sustaining part of an otherwise rather solitary life.

I’m grateful to the people who read my posts. I do write for you, not for myself.

Lastly, I’m grateful for the blog itself –and not only because it’s a precondition for the other things I’ve named.

For me, the blog provides a discipline for learning. Scads of interesting things I might dip in and out of — and often do. But I’ve got posts to publish on a regular schedule. So I’ve got to fix on an issue and try to get my mind around a manageable piece.

And then follow it because even issues I think I’ve got a handle on keep evolving — or surfacing again in different forms.

I’m by choice the hedgehog who knows many things rather than the fox who knows one thing well.

Thanks to the blog, I know more things than I did four years ago — and feel I’m getting to know some of them closer to well over time.

Things I Hope For

I hope to put a fifth candle on my blog’s cake. By then,  I hope I’ll feel that it’s better than the four year old I’m reflecting on now.

I don’t know quite what “better” should be — except posts that are more interesting and useful for the people who read them.

I’d be extremely grateful for feedback of any sort — now or whenever the spirit moves.