Tag Archives: gratitude

I am going against my blogging rule. I’m writing about something I detest writing about: blogging. I hope I do not give the impression of being a gloating cur. On the four year and two month anniversary of Lame Adventures’ debut, I was the recipient of WordPressian validation. I was notified that last week’s post, Lame Adventure 412:The Deodorant Debacle, was selected to be Freshly Pressed. My stats had a nice spike.

I thank all that took the time to visit. I welcome the increase in my following. To my 125 new followers, I will make an effort to visit your sites. Please accept my apology in advance that I anticipate this mission could take me two hours shy of forever to complete. I lead a very active life: I work full-time, I write humor pieces that do not appear on Lame Adventures (in 2013, I self-published a book; my worst seller), I work out four-five times a week, I usher off-Broadway theater and I make time for my posse. Please be patient with me. If you are inclined to post several times a week, several times a day, or your posts are long-form, I am easily overwhelmed. Until a day is 36 hours in length, I have neither the time nor the energy to read a barrage of posts from one blogger or the blogospheric equivalent of Ulysses. To me, less is enough. If you receive a like from me, I guarantee that I read your post and genuinely liked it.

I was Freshly Pressed once before. It happened 196 Lame Adventures ago, on a Friday in August 2011, the era before Freshly Pressed badges began adorning sites. I had about 70 likes, 99 comments and a monumental hangover from quaffing my weight in sake the night before. When it happened again last Monday I was stone cold sober. That morning, I groused to Godsend, my colleague at The Grind, that traffic was slow.

Me: It’s obvious to me that this post is a leaden soufflé.

When I received the email from Krista at WordPress alerting me that I would be Freshly Pressed later that week I was surprised. I noticed the number 1,788,883, in our correspondence. I asked Krista if my post was the 1,788,883^rd to receive this recognition. Was my lucky number 1,788,883? This prompted me to Google how many hairs there are on the average human head: 100,000. I wondered how many grains of sand there are on earth? Robert Krulwich at NPR’s answer:

“…[I]f you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we’re speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 10¹⁸ grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.”

I concluded that my post, the possibly 1,788,883^rd Freshly Pressed, fell nicely in-between the average head of human hair and all the grains of sand in the world. Krista answered my email. She explained that 1,788,883 is a numerical ID code. There have been less than 12,000 posts that have been Freshly Pressed.

I intended to write that deodorant post a week earlier, but that week had been hectic. I prefer to publish posts whole-assed rather than half-assed so I held off writing it. Delaying writing that post was one of the smartest moves of my life ranking with when I left my desk at another Grind a nanosecond before the ceiling collapsed directly over my chair.

The cynic in me, who comprises 99% of my being, is aware that so many other deserving bloggers have never been granted this validation once. This brings to mind a quote from the author Gore Vidal:

Gore Vidal: Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

I knew that feeling through my first 215 Lame Adventures. I returned to feeling like chopped liver through the next 195. You can never predict when your lucky number will come up, but hopefully it will be well before 1,788,883.

Regularly scheduled Lame Adventures will return next week.