HALF A MILLION WORDS

March 10th, 2020

Today we take a short break from our regularly scheduled programming to pause for a moment in order to celebrate a wee little achievement.

Today, Tinkered Thinking hits half a million words.

This officially marks the halfway point for the initial experiment, which was to write and produce at least 1,000 podcast episodes and write 1 Million words.  Naturally, it’s taken a bit longer than anticipated to hit half a million, so it looks like Tinkered Thinking is destined to go at least 1400 episodes, pending any unforeseen disaster of course. 

To be clear, the Tinkered Thinking website doesn’t actually have half a million words.  There are projects that are underway behind the scenes that will be released in coming months and later this year, but all told and combined, this little side-hobby project has hit the milestone.  Not like anyone would ever count anyway.

It’s reasonable to think that the number of people who have a 1,000+ page word document stuffed with half a million words is pretty small.

So what does it feel like to have this in my possession?

Honestly, it feels much like if I were to ask you how it feels to have taken a breath half a million times in a row. 

Once something becomes a non-negotiable part of your day, it ceases to require effort.  And this extends to the point where you notice it negatively if it’s missing.  Several times I have prepared episodes for weeks in advance in order to take a little vacation from the project, only to find that I was writing gargantuan text messages to friends and in response to people on Twitter. 

Not writing, has become a bit like holding your breath.  The system starts to get a little squirrely without the practice.

Considering how little effort the project actually takes, it’s hard to imagine life without it going, but then again, it seems even more ridiculous to think about this project going on for something absurd like decades. 

But we will see.  This project has already garnered far more of an audience than I ever imagined and it was not even undertaken with this goal.

If, however, enough people find value in Tinkered Thinking and the number of supporters, readers and listeners continue to grow, there’s many directions this thing could go.

And if you’re curious about where Tinkered Thinking might go, please share it with family and friends.  While monthly and one-time donations are always a truly tremendous help, growing an audience for something like this is far more powerful in the long run. 

Many goodies for subscribers are in the works. 

So stay tuned.