Ten years after

 

The Thompson Center and City Hall, July 1, 2013

    Friday morning was more eventful than is usual. But things quieted down about 5:30 a.m., and I had some time to myself. So I thought about my blog post for today, Saturday — I like to get them out of the way early, so I don't have to worry about them later — and looked at my camera roll, for inspiration, settling on a photo I took of a big cucumber from my garden.
     Soon I was lost in the etymology of the word "cucumber," reading the Oxford English Dictionary and various niche dictionaries, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the index in Mencken's "The American Language," plus "Gulliver's Travels" and the Bible. I learned a lot.
     When I was done, about 6:15 a.m., I realized that if the cucumber exegesis was posted today, it would run on the 10th anniversary of the creation of this blog. An idea I liked, to mark the day without comment beyond a dissection of cucumbers. No need to crow. "Self-praise is self-condemnation," as Cervantes writes. 
     But another consideration came to play — that's what writing is, weighing one factor against another. I really liked my cucumber reflection, so much that I thought it might make an out-of-left field early July treat in the newspaper. So I held it for ... not Monday, that's already written. Wednesday then. 
     Which leaves today open. And I am sort of glad. A man writes a blog every day for a decade,  3,652 days — the two extra days for the leap years of 2016 and 2020 — without fail, and he should ... what? 
     Take a bow? There is a desperate, Daffy Duck quality to that. Falling to one knee, spreading my arms at the Hollywood Bowl. Almost begging for the chorus of crickets. Most people don't read the blog and don't care. I read it. I write it. I care. What's there to say?
     Give thanks? That's better. I really, really enjoyed writing this blog these past 10 years. Sure, I'd have liked it to send shock waves through the media world. But it didn't. Everygoddamnday.com does not bestride the city like a colossus. I rarely ever meet anyone who reads it. Doesn't matter. As I once said, "and my garden isn't ConAgra either, but I plant tomatoes every spring." Why? I like doing it, and enjoy the result, especially the scenes from my family, preserved in amber, like this, about my older boy, or this, about the younger.  They're priceless to me. The boys don't seem to know or care.
     At five years, the anniversary was noted by media columnist Robert Feder. He's enjoying a well-deserved retirement, but our mutual friend, Eric Zorn, mentioned the 10 year anniversary on his fine Picayune Sentinel, mostly allowing me to reflect on the experience.

     I asked myself if there are any new features I'd like to add, and I've begun a box, "10 YEARS AGO ON EGD," tucked on the upper left side of my blog page. I don't plan to change the post every day — not every post is worth a second read, so once a week seems ideal — but it'll spotlight essays from a decade ago that I believe retain their currency. Today I feature the very first, explaining what I'm trying to do here.
     I want to thank my wife, Edie, who stopped urging me to just abandon the quotidian aspect of this blog several years ago, and doesn't mind my regular trips to the office to bat something out. She accepts it, and I appreciate that. Thanks as well to the owner of the superlative Chicago icon, Eli's Cheesecake, Marc Schulman — he has been my sole advertiser since the beginning, paying good money for the privilege — some of his cash is in my wallet now. I can't imagine it is a sound business strategy for him, though perhaps he values the unhinged panegyrics to cheesecake that I write every year to welcome his holiday advertisement. I sure do. 
     Eric Zorn has been a consistent booster of the blog, as has John Williams on WGN. Charlie Meyerson of Chicago Public Square convinced me to send out an email every morning with a link to today's post, and that seems to have goosed my numbers. The blog toted up more than 140,000 hits in June, which strikes me as a lot, even if a suspicious number of those occurred in Singapore. 

     Timothy Mennel, an executive editor at the University of Chicago Press, asked me to write a book based on this blog, "Every Goddamn Day: A Highly Selective, Definitely Opinionated, and Alternatingly Heartbreaking and Humorous Historical Tour of Chicago." Like the blog that inspired it, the book did not set the world on fire when it came out last October. But I loved doing it, and appreciate those on the Chicago scene who supported it, particularly Rich Melman, Shermann Dilla Thomas, Bill Savage, Don and Terese Schmidt, Christie Hefner, Joyce Winnecke, and everyone else who showed up at a signing or bought a copy. 

    Speaking of which, why don't you buy one now? You won't regret it.
     Who else? Thanks to all those who acted as copy editors and fact checkers, and who added their trenchant remarks afterward  — Tate and Grizz and Bitter Scribe and the rest.  I'm proud to have such thoughtful readers.

     Thanks to Caren Jeskey, who wrote on Saturdays for nearly three years, first from Austin, Texas, then here. I enjoyed sharing her unique perspectives, and was proud of myself that even though I didn't always agree with what she was saying, I was able to step back and let her speak. Thanks to the writer friends who gave it a try after she stepped away, such as Jonathan Eig and Gene Weingarten.

    Letting others have their say struck me as a step toward humility, which has been an elusive quarry in my life. "The only wisdom we can hope to acquire/Is the wisdom of humility," T.S.Eliot writes in "East Coker." "Humility is endless."
     As is this blog. Oh, it'll end someday, through some circumstance — I'll be hit by a bus — but the blog will float onward down the lazy river of the Internet, I hope, forever. "A kind of rump immortality" is how I described it to Robert Feder. I like to think of it like one of those interactive computer game worlds, like Myst, where readers at some future point can find it and poke around and learn things and derive meaning and pleasure from life that otherwise might elude them. Long after I'm gone, somebody will read something and like it and be enriched and comforted. That's a lot.
     Or maybe some circuit will pop and the whole thing wink out. Just as well. Nothing lasts forever, and the key is to like what you're doing while you're doing it. Be glad while you are alive. I enjoyed the writing the thing, and am gratified that an undefined, constantly changing group of people enjoyed reading it. Thank you.