I can take or leave “RENT,” but those cats know how to measure a year.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, or fifty two blog posts.

One year ago I decided to blog faithfully – once a week in perpetuity – but that’s hard work. Some weeks I struggled to get anything up, other weeks the ideas came in bunches and I’d find myself a month ahead. As of last week, it all washed out and I’d managed to post every week for a full year.

Now it’s time to regroup.

During my short tenure in small-town newspaper journalism, my managing editor told me, “there’s a novel inside every journalist – the smart ones will keep it there.”

(He also once asked me if I had a drinking problem, and when I said I did not, he replied, “I suggest you get one.”)

While I’d love to be the next Stephen King or JK Rowling and set the literary world on fire while lining my pockets, my writing anymore is just to amuse myself. Is it any good? You tell me. I like a lot of it. My favorites are the ModelStories, in particular Idaho, The Last Time, Rock ‘n Rye and The Cell. The first three are micro-fiction and I suppose at just 3,000 words The Cell is, too, but it’s about six times as long as the others.

Reading blogs, I’ve found that if the word count is more than 500 words, I’m unlikely to click on it, so I’ve tried to limit posts to that threshold.

But I want to focus on longer pieces, including, perhaps, that novel. I think there’s a good novel or even a series hiding in Salvation Point and Many Lost Ways and I’d like to see if I can find it, though I might find out I’m not the guy to write it.

Anyway all this is to say I am relieving myself of the burden of posting every week.

But I’m not going away. Tully Luiskama, the FCFL conductor/folk historian who told us about The Cell, might have something up his sleeve again for Halloween. If it’s any good, I’ll put it here 500 words at a time.

Some notes and acknowledgements:

My year of steady blogging has garnered 5,676 page views, 209 likes and 92 comments.

Twitter followers number 19, and 131 people like FCFL Railway on Facebook.

Half of my 67 WordPress followers blog about how to make money blogging while living in Costa Rica/Belize/Peru so it’s probably more like 35 actual followers.

To all of you, Dear Readers, thank you. I write to amuse myself, but it’s nice to know someone else might accidentally be amused along the way.

Special thanks:

To The Train Man’s Wife for her candid critiques, constant inspiration and delightful companionship.

To my good friend Aaron at Assured Services LLC for getting me started.

To Jonathan Caswell of By The Mighty Mumford for the frequent reblogs and kind words.