Thanks to all who make this possible.

This is post number 6,509.

Nearly 18 years of blog posts without missing a day.

A lot goes into writing something every single day for nearly 18 years.

Persistence.
Determination.
A love of writing.
The desperate need to be heard.
A wackadoodle mind capable of thinking of something to say every day.
The arrogance to believe that I have something worthy of expressing every day.
The willingness to scream into the void at times, regardless of who might be listening.
A stubborn relentlessness in the face of those who would silence me through cowardice and lies.

But it also required the assistance of others. Many others.

The thousands of readers who tune in every day, reading my work on my blog, via a daily newsletter, or on social media.

The endless stream of people who ask me questions, send me things to read and watch, challenge my beliefs, rail against my assertions, call me terrible names, and share my work with others.

But also a small band of heroes who help me every day by noting typos, bits of grammatical clutter, factual faux pas, spelling errors, and the like.

I despise typos. I hate them with a deep and ever-burning passion. I read every post that I write at least three times, hoping to catch them all. Tragically, the human mind is perfectly capable of reading a mistaken “me” as an intended “my” without ever noticing the error.

And because I am writing every single day, oftentimes in response to an event in real time, I don’t have the opportunity to farm out my posts to others for editorial input. Instead, I have the kindness of readers to assist me. People who read early and often and help me fix my tragic blunders for the majority of my readers who dig in later on.

The most consistent and amusing of these kind souls is a husband and wife team, Kate and Casey, who read my posts independently of each other but who both send me Facebook or text messages alerting me to a mistake. Sometimes one finds the mistake first, but before I can correct it, the other fires off a text alerting me to the same mistake. Sometimes one person finds one error, then the other person finds a different error.

Best of all, they always alert me of my errors with great affection and cheer, oftentimes offering an empathetic comment alongside the indication of the error.

My goal is to avoid hearing from them entirely. No messages from this couple means I have avoided the dreaded typo for another day.

Sadly, I rarely go a day or two without one or both popping in with a correction.

I once went almost two weeks without hearing from either one of them.

Two weeks without a typo. Those were good days.

But it’s pretty remarkable what people will do for you out of the kindness of their hearts. Over the years, untold numbers of people have contributed to this daily grind, offering me possible topics, support, feedback, criticism, promotion, praise, and in the case of one married couple, almost daily editorial assistance.

It really does take a village.

I wonder if I’ll be hearing from Kate or Casey today… I hope not.