I started this blog as a challenge to make forty item lists for the forty weeks leading up to my fortieth birthday. That was all I was thinking about at the time. I didn’t expect that I’d want to post anything beyond the weekly lists. I was incredibly wrong though. I didn’t even make it a week before I wrote my first non-list post. By the end of the forty weeks the lists were often a chore I had to get through before writing the post I was more excited about writing.
When I pitched my blog idea our very wise community manager noted that I chose a blog name with an expiration date. I was too short-sighted to take that comment seriously. I truly thought I was doing a single writing project: writing forty lists. I didn’t anticipate how much I would enjoy writing here and being a part of the ChicagoNow community.
I’m still here, and despite being past forty and doing only rare list posts I have a blog called “Listing Toward Forty.”
In the clarity of hindsight I realize that I probably should have named my blog “Observacious” which is my Twitter handle (and was my Live Journal handle before that) and is a portmanteau that captures characteristics I try to convey in my writing: being observant and vivacious.
But I was not smart enough to do that, and although I could change the title at the top of this page I cannot change the url. Having a title that doesn’t match the url seems potentially more confusing than having a blog called “Listing Toward Forty” when I’m no longer listing toward forty.
I hope that over time the inappropriateness of the name “Listing Toward Forty” is as easily overlooked as other incongruous names like “LA Lakers” and “Utah Jazz.”
You can see all the namesake lists here.
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Kim Z. Dale 