It was just over a year ago when a tornado ripped through Iowa City, the town I used to call home. That anniversary has been marked around here by retrospectives and updates, but all it made me think was, "Wait a minute! I remember writing about that at the time. Holy crap, I've been writing this thing for a year?"
So even though my official one-year mark has come and gone, it's never too late for a commermoration. I've been plowing through my back pages so you don't have to, and I've come up with a few observations:
1) I originally started writing this to deal with my grief over my mother's death, and I assumed that would, at least initially, be my main focus. By only the second post, I was whining about my ex. By my fourth, I was whining about my cats. Sadly, this set a pattern.
2) The second week of posts contained both my first placeholding Random Thoughts and my first piece about the Bush administration. Not until my third week did I use an oral sex metaphor to describe the media's treatment of Bush, and shockingly, not until my second month did I use the word "douchebag" to describe a Republican!
3) John Lennon, of course, gets a shout-out in the very title of this site, but it was three weeks before I referenced Phil Ochs, Peter Sellers and Sam Peckinpah, and four weeks before Phil Silvers got a mention. A week after that marked the first time I wrote at any length about Vincente Minnelli, who seems to take the prize for most-referenced artist. (I'm a huge fan of Minnelli's but that last fact surprised me, considering I've only mentioned favorites like John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick in passing, if at all.)
4) Picking a title for each post in usually my favorite part of the process. Usually it's a favorite line of dialogue from a movie, a quote from a favorite author or, most often, song lyrics. Lennon gets used a lot, followed by Marshall Crenshaw and Stephen Sondheim. I thought there'd be a lot more Steely Dan lyrics and James Joyce quotes. Lots of Star Wars lines, though.
5) Speaking of which, there are far fewer Star Wars-based analyses of Bush's politics than expected, though probably more than necessary.
6) The quality of my writing is better when I knock it out in a rush, but I usually don't write that way. Certainly, I think my actual prose has improved over the last year, but I spend too much time analyzing every word, which, ironically, only makes things worse--I don't always say what I mean to say. I'll try to do better.
7) I'm not the same person I was a year ago.
