Against all Odds

Did you ever stop to think and then forget to start again?
                                                                     - Winnie-the-Pooh


It is the 30th consecutive day that I have posted to this blog.  There were some days that I felt tired and uninspired.  There were plenty of days that I was tempted to abandon my July promise to write everyday.  In truth, writing everyday probably IS too often, especially when I am working and traveling and all that.  But, I also knew that if I gave up, I would 'forget' to start again.  So I just plowed on.  Sometimes uninspired. Often out of words.  Sometimes out of ideas.

And it got better.

At least sometimes.

Tomorrow is both the end of the July promise and my 100th posting to this site. Wow! Maybe if I read all this stuff, I'll find a thread worth pursuing as I drop back to a weekly posting schedule, which I intend to keep up for a while.  Hopefully, a long while.

Last November, my coblogger-in-crime and I posted quick daily observations to a another blog that we share, called Finding Joy.  I was scanning that site for ideas and I came upon this entry from November 4, 2011.  The day I originally wrote it, I was in Montreal for a conference, but I had a similar existential mid-night  mini-crisis in San Francisco on Saturday evening.

It was 3 a.m. and I awoke to these thoughts.

I pray because I am so small.

I am one person in 7 billion on a planet that revolves around one of the 300 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy which is one galaxy in about 170 billion galaxies in the universe.

I pray because I am so small.

I contain about 63 kg of the estimated 3.4 x 10^54 kg in the universe.  As a percentage, that represents 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000018% of the mass of the universe.

I pray because I am so small.

My mass is so inconsequential, my existence so unlikely that if I were a statistician I would say with great certainty that I don't exist.  But I do.  I breathe.  I love. I laugh.  I work.  I play.  I find joy.

I pray because I am so small.
And so very grateful.

Hmmm, I think I need to lay off the chili burritos before bed!  

(Here is a link to a significantly funnier take on this idea.)