What can you do in 4,383 days?

Hmm.

In 4,383 days, you could…

• Own a vintage 1991 Pontiac 6000, watch the car die, replace it with a 2005 Saturn Ion, watch that car have electrical spasms, replace it with a 2006 Chevrolet Cobalt SS, drive it until the car gets destroyed on a North Carolina highway, and then continue on with a 2013 Chevrolet Cruze.
• Start off with a BlackBerry 7803(e) phone, go through five other BlackBerries, including the Q10, the Priv, and currently holding on to the KEYone for dear life.
• Place 40 albums in a coffin for listening to in the afterlife.
• Finally get around to watch 21 films that everyone else has watched.
• Go through the struggles of surgeries and diabetes and divorce and rebirth.
• Photograph a lighthouse in Nova Scotia.
• Photograph a locomotive in Pennsylvania.
• Photograph a solar eclipse in South Carolina.
• Fall in love with local minor league basketball all over again, whether it’s in Albany, or in Vermont, or in Ontario.
• Find a videotape of your greatest achievement in high school.
• Rewrite your college thesis from 1985 and turn it into a book in 2013.
• Write another book in 2020.
• Get hooked on a television show involving protection rackets among the plain folk in South Central Pennsylvania.
• Turn old Queen Anne windows into art pieces.
• Turn old wooden crates into art pieces.
• Turn old drive-in speakers into art pieces.
• Discover that the best parking at the Durham Fair is at Strickland’s farm; and the worst parking is at a place called Tilcon.
• Eat at Josie’s at the Altamont Fair.
• Eat at Fried Specialties at the New York State Fair.
• Don’t leave the Big E without having at least two eclairs.
• Appreciate Niagara Falls from both sides of the border.
• Know that you will always outlast your tormentors.
• Discover that some people take April Fool’s Day jokes way too seriously.
• Discover that some people have a very inflated sense of themselves, and do what you can to work around those people.
• Appreciate teammates in competitive bar trivia matches.
• Realize that cameras talk to each other when you’re asleep.
• Winter is for delivering turkey dinners to those in need.
• Winter is for chasing diesel trains. Especially brightly-lit ones.
• Know that Raskolnikov is not just a character in Crime and Punishment.
• Know that Vivaldi is not just a famous classical music composer.
• Always perform the deed that cannot be repaid, whenever the opportunity presents itself.
• Appreciate butterflies and rainbows and snowflakes and drenched dandelions and Milky Ways and sweeping star trails and meteor showers and neon and careful urban exploration.
• Nightowls are not just feathered birds in trees.
• Always honor those who helped you along the way.
• Try to forgive, whenever you’re able, the ones who harmed. Forgive, but never forget.
• And for those who have hurt you, to the point where you question your own existence, understand that you cannot please everyone, so you have to please yourself. So sayeth St. Rick of Nelson.
• There’s no such thing as a good robocall.
• Mix high-grade chili sauce in your bird seed, and the squirrels will stay away from it. Birds, who have no salivary glands, will eat the stuff without flinching.
• That being said, if a squirrel gets in your house, toss your coat on it and bring it outside. But make sure you wait until someone takes a picture of you with the squirrel. You never know whether someone will see that picture and say, “I’d like to get to know the guy who rescued that squirrel.”
• Be there when your friends need help moving, even if they weren’t there when you needed help moving.

And most of all … never miss a day to post.

Since August 25, 2009, this blog – first on a previous platform, and then self-hosted – has gone twelve years, 4,383 days, without missing a single posting day.

So … happy 12th birthday, chuckthewriter.blog. I hope you all have enjoyed the ride, twelve years in, and for as many years to come after this. Thanks for visiting every day, thanks for reading my musings, thanks for commenting, thanks for inspiring me with new ideas and new journeys. Thanks so much.

It’s the best 58th birthday present a guy could want. 😀