The website you hold in your hands was launched at the end of 2013. Three full years later, on this date of today, it will be visited for the one-hundred thousandth time.

If this was a commercial enterprise, 100,000 views in three years would be an abject failure; there are defunct websites that draw greater traffic. Instead, this website is one person’s production and reflects the things he finds interesting or in need of attention (his own and others’). No more, no less. Nothing abstract about it.

I like to think of myself as a professional writer; in 2013, I built a platform out of nothing for myself, climbed on it, and started typing. No one on this planet was waiting to read what I had to write about anything at all. No one was holding their breath. No one was relieved to find that I had started to write again.

Being a disabled person who collects a tiny-but-steady income means that I no longer need to do a few things:

1. Voluntarily send my résumé to some publication that I either admire or have never ever heard of in order to pursue a job that I almost certainly do not understand.

2. Spend the next few days hoping to be invited to be interviewed.

3. If invited to be interviewed, dress up or dress down (and almost always over-dress) for an encounter in which if nothing else, “first impressions are everything,” but when I am looking for a job, I do not make a good first (or second or third) impression.

4. At the interview, spend some time engaged in what tiny little bit I remember one ought to do to “positively visualize success”; thus, I “positively envision” (air quotes included) myself working with this staff for years and years to come, even imagine holiday parties at which I announce my impending nuptials to (I silently look around the office and at the faces I will most likely never see again except in my memories of another failed job interview experience) … her.

5. But, and this is a medium-sized “but,” at the same time, strive to keep my expectations in check and understand that I will probably never lay eyes on any of these people again, so I allow myself to imply out loud with my outdoors voice that I am considering and even being considered by other companies whose offices I have not yet seen from inside the front door. Was I keeping their expectations in check?

Needless to say, it’s a delicate dance, the attempt to land work, as intricate a social dance as any one might hear explained in nature documentaries.

So here I am, in pursuit of nothing at all, and I land in a world in which I get to be a part-time journalist who once or twice breaks news. It’s exactly the gadabout life I always wanted. One hundred thousand of you just took my breath away. Thank you.

* * * *
While I was typing the above, we passed the 100,000 mark. 100,079 now.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for March 10 asks us to reflect on the word, “Abstract.”

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