Six Years and Counting!!!!

It's my birthday! I'm a ninja! It's my birthday!

(I might as well immediately state that is a Sifl and Olly reference because no one is going to get it. To be honest, no one is going to understand what I mean by "Sifl and Olly" either. Sigh.)

Yes friends of the blogosphere tonight marks the six year anniversary of the launch of Battling the Current. I am not making this up; you could peruse all of my past entries by searching the archives on the right column going back to my November 10, 2004 post where I try to explain what a blog is to people. It's been an amazing ride. Let's review some stats.

Number of posts: 1,483

Number of words written: If I take a low estimate and say I average 500 words a post that would equate to 741,500 words. If I guess 600 words a post it equals 889,800 words. I am somewhere in that range. At 60,000 words for a novel that means I have written the equivalent of between 12 and 15 books over the past six years. Yet I still cannot finish my novel. Astounding.

Country that I am most amazed that I get page hits from: Iran. Every year I get a few hits from Iran. I always imagine that this results in some poor censor having to check out this site and try to figure out precisely why I have such an interest in Lindsay Lohan.

Country where I have suddenly become popular: Brazil. Over the past month almost 4 % of the people who read the blog came from Brazil and if you look at the map they are spread across the entire country. I've had nearly as many views from Indonesia. Anyone who wishes to explain this to me I would love to know why.

Number of laptops used: Three. Julie (still operational and the founding computer of the blog), Natalie (wonderful though tempremental machine whose screen imploded on me) and Beth (who I just had diagnosed as suffering a motherboard failure.) I'll be getting a fourth, name to be determined, in the near future. And as I said before I will not name a laptop Lindsay because that would just doom the machine to virus infections.

Number of times I was physically threatened in the comments: Once when I said about a singer songwriter in Lawrence that "the show improved when he broke a guitar string because at least now he had a reason for sucking so badly." That did not go over with the fans.

Bands where my blog has been promoted on the website / primary fan page: Tift Merritt, The Polyphonic Spree and The Frames. The last one is still probably my proudest moment and easily gained me the most traffic. They are my favorite band and people loved the reason I posted the video.

Television shows on the air in November 2004: Joey, My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, Method and Red, The OC

Number of CDs released under the Battling the Current label: Three. I should probably start that up again. People just don't make enough mixtapes.

Distance I must keep between myself and My Beloved Lindsay at all times: 500 yards thanks to a rather humorless judge.


All in all it has been a rather amazing run. I never anticipated writing like this for six years but then again I never imagined anyone reading it either. And the fact is I have gotten comments and readership and even followers (or at least that is what Blogger calls them) so in my mind this has been a pretty successful venture. I know that the past year or so has seen a decline in the amount of posts mainly due to the fact that my schedule is not as constant as it once was but I still love getting to sit down at night and just write whatever I feel like. It really is a highlight of my day.

I still don't know when or if I'll ever stop this site. I'm still trying to figure out its new tone as it was started as a way for me to vent about my failings in my search for my dream girl and now I've, well, now I'm getting ready to marry her. But I have a feeling that just means that my adventures won't stop; they are just going to change shape. It's been a fun ride so far and I doubt it is going to stop anytime soon.