Big Sigh

Let me start this by saying, I read a handful of different blogs, almost all of them about non-serious type things; sports, music, what have you. And, when I read them, I read them with a critical eye. I look at simple stuff mostly, spelling, grammar, typos, etc. When I find an error I shake my head, make a tsk-tsk noise and think to myself, how can you hit the “Publish” button without proofreading your stuff? When the frequency of these errors reaches a certain point, an arbitrary one admittedly, I tend to read that particular blog, or writer, with a jaded eye. Everything gets taken with a grain of salt; since they don’t even care enough to proofread their stuff, how can they care enough to confirm what they write? Makes perfect sense, right? Fwiw, I try to proofread my posts at least three times before I post them. In both edit mode and in preview mode because I figure the different looks will help me spot errors. And even after doing that, truth be told, it’s not unusual for me to go back and reread old posts and still spot a typo or some other screw up. Each one makes me a little crazy too. Not quite “a part of me dies” crazy but more like “JFC, how could I let that slip past me?” crazy. Which is a special kind of crazy all on its own.

That brings me to yesterday. Or maybe more accurately, this morning. When I sat down and reread yesterday’s post before trying to create another piece of finely crafted literature for your enjoyment. And a misspelled word jumped out at me. In the first effing sentence. So I fixed it and hit the “Update” button. Because I care about providing a quality product. Really, all joking aside, I care about what I put out here. Granted, it might not always seem that way, but I promise you, I do. And I kept reading. All the way to the second paragraph where another typo jumped out at me. Boy, I chastised myself. How did I miss these? Once again, I made the correction and hit “Update”. And kept reading. The wheels fell off in the third paragraph where I don’t even know what the hell happened. I know there was still oxygen in the coffeehouse atmosphere, because no groups of people around me passed out. Maybe somebody spiked my coffee, I don’t know, but whatever happened, I created a couple new words in there. So I made the corrections and, because learning had occurred, I waited to update the post until I’d found them all. Good thing too because I found a half dozen frickin’ errors in the bloody post. Good god, I hope I found them all. I’m a little afraid to go back and read it again, you know?

So, I want to apologize to anyone and everyone that read yesterday’s festival of errors. Especially due to the nature of the post. I assure you, the information I passed along was all legit, the stories are all true, they were just delivered to you in an incredibly fumble-fingered way and personally, I expect more from myself. As readers, regular or not, you should expect better of me than what you were served yesterday. At least the links all worked. I hope.

I kind of sat on this one for a few hours, to see if I wanted to add anything, and I think I’m good with where it is. So I’m going to close it out by linking to the well, maybe not new and improved, but certainly (I hope) more readable, version of yesterday’s post. Enjoy.

Peace.