Saturday, 21 June 2008 was my four year anniversary as a blogger. I made my Inaugural Post that Monday in 2004. I had intended to post on the day-of, but I spent the day in question in Atlanta, Georgia on a business trip, running myself ragged for someone else’s year-end bonus. Colorless bureaucrat by day, intrepid blogger by night. Here I am at the Atlanta Peachtree Westin conference room A “continuous refreshment service” helping prospective linguists fill out the SF-86 Questionnaire for National Security Positions. Oh MedWatch 3500 where hast thou gone?

I lead a life devoted to little boxes. Mostly to making sure that people have correctly and completely crammed a continuous record of the last ten years of their lives into a series of little boxes over eleven to thirteen pages. But also comparing in meticulous detail the boxes on the sheets of paper to the corresponding boxes on a computer screen. And then checking off a list of little boxes to record that all content-bearing boxes have been adequately verified. I hate to admit it, but I think it’s my calling. I know that my record of spelling on this site has done nothing to prove the case, but baring the spellings, I am nothing if not meticulous. I am a relentless machine of attention poured into little boxes. I am a tireless warrior against the omission and the oversight. My favorite admonition is that “you have to write N/A as the investigator cannot tell the difference between an omission and a negative response.”

Anyway, the murderously mundane, death of a salesman workaday aside, the blog is great. I really feel like I’m in my groove. The goals no longer seem burdensome and I frequently kick it in confidence that any lull now will be more than made up for in a burst of activity later. And it’s stimulating. I spent almost the whole of today in a state of heightened agitation over the ideas that were swirling around in my head. The only problem is time, stick-to-it-ivness and the adequate eloquence to the task.

Part of the anniversary is the annual review, with an emphasis on the analytical. I switched to a third party product this year and turned over admin rights to John, so I have a helpdesk ticket in with him to get the permissions and whatnot necessary to produce the stats. Hopefully I can produce a more full assessment of the last year in a couple of days. For now it’s off to Miami this weekend: more errands in service to the man. Maybe some mile-high blogging though.