Two years, 500 Posts, 218,000 Words and One Box of Discount Popcorn Shrimp

Today marks a pretty fun day for SlopeFillers because this is post number five-hundred. Pretty crazy stuff for a guy who took a trickier route on his Master’s Degree to avoid writing a thesis.

How many words does it take to write 500 posts? Thanks to Brian Link’s handy dandy WP Word Count plugin we discover that over the last two years (the official two-year anniversary was last Wednesday, June 27) I have written nothing short of 218,869 words of resort marketing shenanigans.

That number doesn’t even count the 10,000+ lines of code in the social dashboards, Social7, and site themes. To put that into perspective, here’s a quick comparison of other “popular” (they clearly didn’t see my analytics dashboard) pieces of literature and their word counts:

• Nineteen Eighty-Four: 88,942 words
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin: 166,622 words
• To Kill a Mockingbird: 99,121 words
• The Adventures of Huck Finn: 109,571 words
• The New Testament: 169,751 words
• The Grapes of Wrath: 169,481 words
• Crime and Punishment: 211,591 words

“Classics” my eye.

To be completely honest, when I saw how many words I’d written, I couldn’t speak (or breathe) for a minute. It’s crazy. I never expected to make it past post 50, much less 500, and I wouldn’t have if marketers like you didn’t take time out of many, many busy mornings to read my posts. I owe you a huge thank you. I also owe a huge thank you to Corey Ryan and Ryan Solutions. He stepped in right when I was on the edge of burning out and kept the project going.

So tonight, in true-to-form, Gregg Blanchard fashion, I’m going to celebrate the occasion by going for a ride and eating a box of popcorn shrimp that I got on sale at City Market last week. Who said blogging wasn’t glamorous?

It’s been a fun adventure. Here’s to another 200,000 words.