As a kid, playing cricket, I always hoped I would score a century. My batting skills put paid to that. My grandfather started to clear a place on his mantelpiece on his 95^th birthday for a telegram from the Queen. He made it to 97. I remember the excitement of getting paid in $100 notes on a building site job I worked on at Uni. Some time after midnight on the 8^th February 2009, at the Victoria Police Headquarters, the Deputy Emergency Response Officer, Doug Hocking said to me “100? 200? We just don’t know how many yet”. 100 is a number that bobs up here and there all the time. And now, I’m up to my 100^th post!

It’s been an interesting ride, part confessional, part inspiration, part road testing of ideas, part helpful ( I hope). It has certainly not been a consistent ride, with long periods of radio silence, due to many things, tiredness, nothing meaningful to say, writers block, busyness. Then there are times that all I want to do is write, but things like work, and cooking dinner, and doing the washing get in the way.

There were a few times when I thought, do I bother, does anyone read it (I suspect that is the lot of the blogger). Some posts I thought were absolutely brilliant (if I don’t say so myself), and only a handful of people read it. (Yes, I can see). I planned a whole series of posts around the Katrina anniversary, but when my first one, which was my own experience of Katrina, tanked, (and I was particularly tired, we were just renovating our house), I shelved them.

But then others surprised me. The series of my experiences at Sendai were chart toppers. The ones where I try to make sense of events happening, are widely read, and shared. The messages I get mean a lot, whether public or private.

The Songs of Sastrugi has been a fascinating process. Some are ones that just lend themselves to the topic, others I need to seek out, and some are just plain obscure. I used The Saints Know Your Product for a post on the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Research Advisory forum. I was asked “why”;  there’s a line in there where Chris Bailey snarls, “Here comes the professor” and as I was hanging out with a lot of professors and associate professors, it just seem right. I have a lot of fun with the music, because is important to me. Interestingly, because the videos are embedded, I can’t tell if anyone listens to it. Perhaps they should be at the top, then you can click on them, and listen while reading. Or maybe I just leave it

I still have plenty of ideas, some straightforward, some strange, and I am looking forward to trying to commit these to paper.

So, thank you dear reader for taking the time to read, comment, or just think.

 

Is there a better song written about writing?