19 October 2007

Time

Sometime during the month of September, this blog had its 10,000th visitor. At some point in the last 30 days I've also written and published my 300th post.

This astonishes me. It shouldn't; for a while there I was writing a post a day and I've been blogging for two years...365x2=730....so the potential for number of posts is much larger than what I've actually done. The name of the blog is a famous quote, so people searching on Google for "Who said well behaved women rarely make history?" land here simply because of the name. (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said that, just in case you were wondering.) So I get some traffic that isn't deserved, just because of the name I choose.

That's OK with me; several folks who read the blog regularly now stumbled on to it that way. Others land here looking for t-shirts with the quote. Cafe Press, people, Cafe Press. Or my own Zazzle site, either one works. (A little shameless self-promotion never hurt anyone, right?)

I try not to think too hard about the political changes that have taken place over the past two years that I've been blogging, the shift to more conservative schools of thought, the breach of the separation of Church and State by W's 'faith-based' initiatives, the degradation of our civil rights under the USA PATRIOT ACT (seriously, don't get me started), the semi-successful attempts by the anti-choice lobby to restrict a woman's right to do as she sees fit with her own body, and the loss of habeas corpus. I hasten to add that freedom of speech affords every single person in this country to have their own personal political agenda; what's good for the goose is good for the gander, after all, and what else am I doing here but pushing my own views?

It simply surprises me, when I take a moment to reflect, that so much time has passed. Even this time of me being unemployed, now more than 100 days long, has flown by. Hopefully, that's soon to come to an end, and once I'm working again the days and weeks will go by even faster still.

I think about the passage of time in the fall, when I still feel like I ought to be heading back to school, even though I graduated from college about 10 years ago. As if something's missing because I'm no longer part of academia. Every year, it seems, I look up one day and summer is over, the leaves are turning, and the year is dying. Gracefully, and beautifully, of course, but coming to an end nonetheless.

In the 7th grade, my geography teacher made us watch a series of videos about the development of the earth, the shifting of the continents, the development of various nomadic tribes. They were narrated by a man, but every so often, a woman's voice would come on and intone piously, "Time Passes." when they wanted to show that a few thousand years had gone by. The class was annoyed and then amused by this constant refrain of 'time passes,' so much so that eventually we giggled when she said it and imitated it in the halls. I can still hear it, even after all these years. I'm surprised to discover that it passes faster and faster the older I get.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have just stumbled upon your blog and I am pleasantly surprised. You are a truly refreshing and unique person, and I appreciate that.

Lucy Arin said...

Thanks very much!

~LA