Rant #2,600: Words

2,600.
 
Yes, this is the 2,600th Rant that has been featured at this site since its inception on May 4, 2009.
 
There have been disruptions to that number—I posted a few things without any numbers, and there was a mistake in the numbering system somewhere down the line which I subsequently fixed—but all told, we have come to #2,600, a chronicle of nearly 12 years of blogging.
 
And you have all been a part of it by reading my Rants every day whether here or on Facebook/
 
I decided to look up exactly what the number “2,600” means in the world we live in, and I was surprised to see that it means so many different things, including as a number.
 
According to Wikipedia:
 
2600 hertz, the audio tone used in phreaking to gain control of telephone networks
2600: The Hacker Quarterly, a magazine named after the aforementioned 2,600 Hz tone
Atari 2600 video game console
ATI's Radeon R600 Radeon HD 2xxx series graphics card
ARP 2600 analog synthesizer
Alfa Romeo 2600, a car
Nokia 2600, a mobile phone
The last year of the 26th century
The number 2600
 
I never knew that “2,600” had so many meanings.
 
But to me, the number means consistency, being here, through thick and thin, to deliver content most weekdays during the past nearly dozen years.
 
We have spoken about things that impact everyone, like the coronavirus, things that have affected me personally, like my unemployment and retirement, and things in general, like the latest celebrity death or things that impacted the Baby Boomer generation.
 
We have spoken about good things on one end, and bad things on the parallel opposite of the good things.
 
For instance, on the good side of things, I spoke about how my family and I emerged from a horrific auto accident with just a few cuts and bruises. Yesterday, I spoke about another auto accident, one with a major celebrity in the car, and accident where Tiger Woods was injured so badly that the road to recovery might be arduous at the very best.
 
And the best thing about this blog and its 2,600 posts is that I have written each and every post from the heart, without any shackles on what I wrote … except one time I enraged a family member so much that I decided to take the original post down.
 
But otherwise, I can write about what I want to write about here, and whoever reads it, reads it, whether it is just 10 people or 100 people or 1,000 people.
 
And I get extra traction from putting the daily Rant up on Facebook, so I know that plenty of people are reading my work on a daily basis, whether they admit to it or not.
 
But that is OK. This blog has helped me keep my sanity during very difficult times, and ultimately, I write for myself, and allow everyone else to come into my world … which is what every writer does to a certain extent, again, whether they want to admit it or not.
 
Making my life’s work as a writer has paid me great dividends if not great salary. I know that my work as a writer has gone to places I will never visit in my lifetime, although since I did visit South Korea a few years ago as a contest winner, I know never to say never about anything.
 
I know that what I have written has generated a lot of emotion from a lot of people, smiles and laughs and a lot of negative feelings too.
 
And that is what a writer does, and I have done it for decades, so this blog has just been an extension of my career as a writer.
 
As former WWE wrestler Mark Henry used to say, “It’s what I do.”
 
And having made my career from it, I think at this point I do it pretty well.
 
I am not perfect, and even like a batter that hits .300, I always look for improvement in what I do.
 
But I am satisfied at what I do, what I generate, and what I contribute, even though I don’t have a mass following.
 
That is not the reason I started this blog, and I know it is a cliché, but if one person reads this, and it gets that person to think, then I am very, very satisfied.
 
So thanks for coming here and reading my stuff, or thanks for reading what I write on Facebook.
 
We will probably hit blog entry number 2,700 sometime in August or early September, and by that time, the world should be changed, a little more on the straight and narrow, as the coronavirus vaccine should be available to most anybody that wants it by that time … I hope.
 
Things are beginning to already get back to something more resembling normal, but we still have a long way to go, and I still believe that it won’t be until at least 2022 until we can put this behind us, if even then.
 
And I have been saying that for months, but if you read this blog on a daily basis, you already know that.
 
So let’s strive for a return to normalcy. Let’s do whatever we can do to get there.
 
I know we can do it.