Whew!

I read towards the end of October that November was being set aside by folks who blog as a time to try to post at least once a day. It has a name that combines letters of its words into some slightly menacing Soviet-era agency-sounding word, but I forget what it was.

Well, I thought I'd try it. After all, I used to write at least five days a week when I worked at the paper, and I did that for a few years. Let's see if I still can, I sez.

I can, it turns out, although it's not as easy as it was when the city council or the school board or the police went and did something that gave me a ready-made topic. Hunting up your own stuff every day is a little bit harder work, even with the whole internet at your disposal. Some things I don't care to write about at all, some I don't care to write about any more, and some I don't care to learn anything about them in order to write more. Some posts said what I would have said, so why do that over and over again.

The only day that's kind of questionable was Sunday, Nov. 15. All I posted was a link to the sermon that went up on my sermon blog. But on the other hand, I posted the sermon, which is about as long or longer as most of the things I post here, so I'm inclined to let myself off with a warning.

This exercise really broadened my respect for some of the best daily columnists and such, like my favorite, the late Mike Royko. Nine hundred words, five or six days a week. Even with research assistants to handle the legwork, that ain't shabby.

My respect for the worst columnists, of course, remains quite narrow.

(ETA: Andrew Sullivan is actually the worst columnist/pundit who writes in any kind of a national forum, but I choose not to link him.)