I read in the New York Times that Roger Kahn died. The author of The Boys of Summer (the #2 book on Sport Illustrated’s 100 Greatest Sports Books, right after A. J. Lieblings The Sweet Science) was 92 years old. Earlier in the week I read obituaries for Gene Reynolds (M*A*S*H), and Kirk Douglas, who at 103 appears to be out-survived only by Olivia de Havilland. All of these obituaries made me want to write about obituaries.
This, however, exposed an increasingly frequent problem I encounter when writing on this blog: I’ve written about obituaries already. In fact, I’ve written about them more than once. In 2016 I wrote about them in “How I Read the Newspaper.” I touched on the subject again in 2017 in a post aptly titled, “Obituaries.” I returned to the subject last year in “Morning Routines.”
I’ve written about 6,500 posts for this blog—about 2.5 million words, spanning more than 15 years. Since I tend to write about whatever comes to mind instead of focusing on one particular subject, it sometimes seems as though there isn’t anything I haven’t written about. When something occurs to me that seems like it might be worthy subject, the first thing I do these days is a search of the blog to see if I’ve written about it before. I am frequently surprised that I have.
Having written about a subject before doesn’t automatically prevent me from writing about it again. Two conditions typically push me to write again on a subject: (1) I have something new to add; or (2) it has been a long time (a few years at least) since I last wrote about it. Readers come and go, change and evolve, so why not write about it again?
The first condition is most common. Having something new to say is useful. What’s new is often a change of opinion on a subject over time. The classic example of this is my opinion of audiobooks. In January 2012, I wrote a piece on audiobooks where I stated, quite forcefully, that audiobooks were not for me. Reading that piece now is painful now, especially my snobbish reasoning for why I though audiobooks weren’t for me. Eight years, and over 400 audiobooks later, my opinion has changed.
As a kind of experiment, I tried to think of subjects that I might not have written about (or that I had completely forgotten I’d written about) over the years, and then search to blog to see if I had or hadn’t. Here is just some of the results:
- I’ve written about toilets.
- On a couple of occasions, I’ve written about milk and cookies.
- I’ve imagined what my life would be like if I could use the force.
- Here’s an odd one: I’ve written about the inside of my refrigerator.
- Dictionaries? Yup. I’ve also written about other reference books I use.
- Pet peeves and bad habits. For some reason, my post on bad habits is an evergreen post that keeps getting lots of views.
- I’ve written about flowers on a street corner.
- Stores that have come and gone in the mall food court.
- Elevator etiquette. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
- Maps, maps, maps.
At times it seems I’ve written about everything but the kitchen sink. Except—I’ve written about that, too.
Notably absent here is political writing. This sometimes surprises me, given that my degree is in political science and journalism. The truth is that it seems everywhere I turn, people are writing about politics, and anything I have to say has been said before. I don’t particularly enjoy writing about politics, either. I’d just as soon write about something more obscure, but fun: like my inability to locate a paperclip when I need one.
Perhaps all of this is just to say that, while I try my best not to be too repetitive here, some repetition is an inevitable byproduct of the thousands of posts I’ve already written. I ask for your patience with this as I blunder on into the future.
RSS - Posts