First Project - Start a Blog - Day One

  One Thousand Days.

  Every other time I have seen a thousand of something, the six per cent of my DNA that I got from Neanderthalensis* says to the rest of me, "Wow, that's a lot of something."  The first time I saw my bank account had a thousand dollars in it was really exciting.  And really short lived.

  A certain statistic about Wilt Chamberlain was also mind-boggling. **

  A week and a half ago was the first time I thought about 1000 and the thought was "That's not much."

  A little history.  I was born on October 28th, 1975 c.e.  There, history done.  I'm a social studies teacher, and while History class shouldn't just be memorizing dates, some dates are fun to learn.  This one was very easy for me because there was annual positive reinforcement with cake during some very formative years.

  For those of you who use math practically, you can see I am 37 years old.

  Which is sort of the impetus of my....man, I hate the word. Blog.  "Weblog" shortened....really?

  Anyway, the subject of my blog Bjournal is I am 37 and a bit.

  One Thousand Days.  As of today (there's probably a time stamp somewhere), that is how long I have until I am forty.

  I want to state for the record (which is my record, so there was really no point in stating it thusly) that I don't think my life is over at forty or some nonsense.  Barring tragedy, I don't believe there will be an appreciable difference between my physical form and my worldview when I am 39 years, 364 days, and those qualities a day or two later.  This is not a comment on my forties.

 This is a comment on my twenties.

 Here're some of the highlights of Ninety-Five to Aught-Five (I reckon):

•   I went to China to attend university language courses and experience another culture, which I largely blew off to stay in my air-conditioned dorm room and make notes for a role-playing game I never ran for my friends.
•   I started collecting comic books - oh, not in pristine mylar bags for some pie-eyed dream of retiring on my mint condition NOT ACTION COMICS #1, just in compilation trade paperback format.  This was expensive.
• I took 4 years to get my 3 year Bachelor of Arts in...no, no major.  I want to clarify that I took 4 YEARS OF MY TWENTIES.  I also took 3 years of my teens.  You guys demonstrated your math skills earlier.  I won't insult you by doing the adding for you.
• I got fired from a number of jobs for....let's call it unbridled laziness.  I like it.  Wild herds of laziness (it's the same in singular and plural), galloping as slowly as possible, till they get tired and want to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (or you know, whatever lazy people watch now).
• I watched a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• I got a night job as a security guard, with a clip-on tie (for the possibility of avoiding being strangled, not just because of the assumption "hey, walking a hallway at 4:00 am is complicated enough.")
• I spent my 30th birthday skipping out on the chance to get made up as a shambling corpse on a midnight shoot for an indie Zombie film to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons.  It was a great game, by the way (my barbarian accountant is better than any character you tell me about).

  I want to thank that clip-on tie, in retrospect. I stared at it around my 30th birthday, and I realized, I'm gonna be wearing this thing in my fifties.  I started to make a few changes.  When I turned thirty-two, I was living in dorm and taking my Bachelor of Education.  A couple more years and the woman I love and I were raising our baby girl.  I run my school's chess club.  My thirties are all right.  But there's always something slowing me down.  

  Inertia seems to be central to my identity.  It makes it hard for me to get up and go/do/be.  I should have spent my twenties learning more things, learning how to do things, how to do things better.

  And now my partner has started reading all of Shakespeare's plays, and is planning on reading them all in a year.  And she is documenting it.

  I have One Thousand Days.  It's not much, but I have a thousand days to improve myself, study things, dismantle and assemble and try to understand things.  A lot of people would learn a thousand new things in that time, but I've been pretty honest with the 2 or maybe (fingers crossed) 3 of you that have read this so far.  I'll probably need 10 days per project.  This is day one of Project Number One.  This is the only thing on the Bjournal (oh yes, I'm making that a thing), but I have 9 days to learn how to do this so you 3 (confidence!) will keep coming back for more.

  Day 2:  The Manifesto made Manifest, or something.

-Mike

* (I read that somewhere, and I'm not fact-checking it, cuz I like it)

** (Can anyone find the origin of the term "Boggle" for me?  I know I'm sitting at an internet capable computer, but I don't wanna.)