Number Crunching

 

I hated arithmetic/math when I was in school.  Numbers and me just didn't seem to go together in any meaningful way.  I inwardly raged that I would never use it once I left school, so why was I needing to be tortured by it?

And then I took up weaving.  And started a business.  Needed to do double entry bookkeeping, balance my cheque book,  Number crunch for yarn needed.  Work out a price for my products.  File my income tax.

Et cetera...

I started this blog back in 2008, when quite a few people were blogging.  It seemed like something I should do, in part to promote myself, in part to teach, in part to give back to the community.  I tried monetizing the blog but by then there were fewer bloggers and blogs seemed to be dying in terms of anyone interested in reading them.

But I enjoyed the writing.  Writing is how I process things, figure out how I feel about them.  So this blog, started after my brother died and I was still wrestling with my own health issues and mortality, became a diary.

One of the things blogspot does is provide some statistics, which is how I know that my page view count is approaching that unforeseen and someone magical number of two million(!).

But it also provides a number count of how many posts I have written over the years.  That number recently rolled over 3000.

3000+ times I have come here to educate, philosophize, encourage, explain, and yes, defend.   3000+ times I have sat down at the computer and tried to put my thoughts into words that would make some sort of sense.  

Each post takes between 20 and 60 minutes - so let's average that to 40 minutes for the sake of simplicity.  (Because I still don't get along with arithmetic/math very well.)

3000 x 40 = 120,000 minutes or 2000 hours over the past 12 years.  Some of you who have been reading along with me have spent time with me, maybe drinking a cup of coffee/tea.  As I frequently do while I am writing.  So, in a way, we have been coffee buddies for a while now.  

I keep writing because people sometimes let me know that they appreciate what I have to say.  That I might educate them, or make them think.  And so I keep going.

Truth be told, I write this as much for myself as I do for anyone else, but such comments encourage me to keep going.  Keep writing.  Keep trying to puzzle things out.

2020 saw me slip into the role of pandemic diarist and isolation encourager.  Our federal government has tried to help people and the medical officers, especially in BC, were given centre stage to explain what was happening and what needed to happen as the pandemic progressed.  Since I had a good source of information, it seemed right that I educate about the pandemic, not just weaving.  So I shook the pom-poms of encouragement to stay home, wear masks (once there were enough for health care workers, Dr. Henry pivoted into that message, although many people seemed confused about it so I took it as my duty to amplify it), maintain physical distance, etc.  It was not on my life bingo card, and yet...

As things spiralled into a full blown global pandemic, I was encouraged to do on line presentations, which I at first rejected, then realized that I could do that.  We now had functioning resources like Zoom and others.

It's been an interesting year of sudden change, an upending of plans, pivoting to other approaches, but throughout it all, I came to the desktop to write about it, to try to make sense of it.

I hope it has helped others to make sense of it as well.   Not just the weaving, but the pandemic.  Because right now, the pandemic trumps all else.

Vaccines are beginning to roll out, but there are the usual hiccoughs.  We were told that vaccines would probably be available by this autumn, and yet, here we are in January and there are two with more on the way.  Not being ready for them is not really surprising, but people get their hopes up and don't deal with disappointment very well.

So we have to hold tight and be patient.  Not something I'm good at, but I had been mentally prepared to wait until at least September, so the current delay in Canada is not distressing me overly.  I know it's different for other people who are concerned about elders in long term care, vulnerable people.  But the logistics of getting shots into the arms of 35+ million people - and that's just Canada - means there will be waits, there will be challenges. there will be time passing.

I expect that I will continue to blog, to write about weaving, my life, and the pandemic for the coming months.

If anyone wants to buy me a 'coffee', they can do that at my ko-fi account