Musing Twelve Hundred (more or less) (#1200)

Topics/tags: Meta-musings

This musing is my twelve hundredth musing. More accurately, it’s the musing numbered 1200. I’ve written more than 1200; I just haven’t posted them all. And, um, I’ve unposted a few, too. But we’ll go with 1200. If I have a numbering system, I might as well stick with it.

Multiples of 100 seem to be a good time to step back and reflect on the endeavor. It appears that I posted my first musing on April 19, 2016. At least that’s when I put it in the GitHub repository. Since I put my second musing in the repository on the 20th, the 19th seems accurate. If I recall correctly, at the time, I realized that (a) I had things that I kept telling people and (b) I had things I wanted to complain about in public [1].

I’m too lazy to re-read the early musings right now, but I believe my plan was to try to write daily, or approximately daily, until I ran out of things to write about. I haven’t run out of things to write about, but I’ve repeatedly run out of time, energy, or motivation to write daily.

Let’s see … I posted musing 1100 more than two years ago, on July 19, 2020 [2]. That’s not even a musing per week. Damn. In any case, I had hoped to restart daily musings at the start of the summer. I failed. Perhaps I’ll manage this fall. It seems like a good leave project [3].

I wonder how I did on the previous 100’s. Musing 1000 was posted on January 27, 2020. So musings 1000-1100 were written over six months, rather than two years. That seems to be approximately one every two day. Semi-daily? Bi-daily? Tri-weekly? What’s a good term.

Musing 900 was posted on September 14, 2019. Musings 900-1000 were posted almost daily. Musing 800 was posted on November 5, 2018. It appears, musings 800-900 took about ten months.

Okay, I’m bored of this analysis. I assume that you are, too. My conclusion? There are times I’ve mused daily; there are times I haven’t mused daily. I should probably write There are times mused or ranted daily; there are times I’ve haven’t mused or ranted daily. I’m not sure that it matters.

What does matter? My health. My family. Justice in the world.

Whoops. I answered the question out of context. In terms of Sam’s Assorted Musings and Rants, what matters most is that I benefit from writing and what matters second most is that others benefit from the writing. I always benefit from writing, but I don’t always have time to write [4]. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t always benefit from ranting. Why not? Ranting tends to raise my blood pressure, rather than lower it. Alternately, ranting does not necessarily improve my mood. But it can. So I’ll still rant. And muse. And, I suppose, blather on and on about pointless things. Perhaps I’ll even work on improving my writing. Maybe I should take Ralph’s course again.

I worry that my brain is not functioning as well as it has in the past. Certainly, this musing doesn’t seem to have the Sammish silliness that I usually need to sneak in. The data analysis doesn’t have the same depth. The sentences seem about the same as normal; not too sophisticated or varied, but still comprehensible. Or semi-comprehensible.

What musings do I have planned? I’m not keeping a notebook right now, but I have a rant planned that was inspired by Dean Montgomery’s excellent Community Friday, a tribute to my amazing wife on our 35th wedding anniversary, a response to Dean Montgomery’s question about the three sisters, a not-quite-FAQ about my leave, a bad joke inspired by Dean Montgomery [5,6], a reflection on transfer credits, and something about our new registration system [7]. That’s about all I have planned right now. I’m sure that other things will come up. After all, three days ago three of those topics weren’t even on my mind.

See you in the funny pages. Or on the Interweb. Or something like that.

[1] I’m not sure the latter is a good thing. But there are times that it’s nice to know that other people share your frustrations, and I think it’s good that students can sometimes see that faculty share their frustrations. At the time, I was complaining about the discontinuation of Posse. I still miss Posse. I’m glad we’ve upped the number of Questbridge scholars we support.

[2] Today is August 27, 2022.

[3] More on the leave forthcoming.

[4] I’ve also found times in which the words fail to flow. It’s not worth forcing them at such times.

[5] Dean Montgomery seems to inspire me.

[6] I have to do the occasional short musing.

[7] Rant? Reflection? Musing? Joke? I’m not sure. I’ll figure it out when I write it.

Version 1.0 of 2022-08-27.