"One reader is a miracle; two, a mass movement."I try to keep those words in mind every day as a writer.
On this the seventh anniversary of The Green Skeptic, I want to thank you, dear readers. I am grateful for your support, your comments, and your readership. I hope you are finding some sustenance here.
Seven years ago I wrote in the first post for this blog,
"As 'The Green Skeptic' I propose to create a web voice that is at once environmentally concerned, while remaining skeptical about our methods of communication and action. My blog will explore current environmental issues in a pragmatic fashion, debunking environmental myths, while supporting market-based solutions that compliment actions taken both locally and globally."While this blog is about "challenging assumptions about how we live on the earth and protect our environment," it is also about the practice of writing.
Two bloggers I read regularly wrote eloquently about writing this week, Fred Wilson and Joshua Brown.
Fred wrote on A VC that through blogging
"I have learned to love writing. It's creative. It's a puzzle. How do I tell the story? How do I get my point across? How do I do it crisply and clearly? How do I end it on a strong note?"Joshua, who writes the excellent blog, The Reformed Broker, suggested,
"It is in the writing that I discover what I actually think. It is in the writing and the communicating of ideas and concepts that they truly become mine. This is a cognitive learning thing that is very widely understood in the education world. When I'm blogging there are two things that are happening - you, the reader, are being exposed to something I think might be important and I, the writer, am crystallizing my own beliefs and understanding of the topic at hand."Writing is important to me. As I've written elsewhere on this blog,
"I have always been a writer -- it's all I've really ever wanted to be. Sure, I do a lot of other things, always have, much of which I've stopped doing over the years. But I'll never stop writing. It's who I am. I'm a writer."As we mark this seventh year of The Green Skeptic together, I want to thank you again for reading. I hope to keep up my end of the bargain moving forward with good, informed writing about the issues, a healthy skepticism about both hyperbole and hysteria and, most of all, a respect for you, my readers.
Happy Thanksgiving.
