Time Flies When You're Having A Super Time: The Dept. Turns 4 And Feels Fantastic

Dear readers, a few days ago An Auspicious Occasion sneaked right up and subsequently passed me by unnoticed and without commemoration by anyone, even the vast web of the Internets. On August 6th, the Dept. of Nance turned four!

And They said it wouldn't last. Ha!

Though I have not become a Blogging Success Story with a book deal and appearances on a myriad of television shows, my foray into the online writing world has been pretty much what I'd looked for when I set out on August 6th, 2005: I wanted to practice what I preach to my creative writing classes, that writers write. I wanted to see if I had the discipline to stick with writing on a pretty regular basis. I wanted to toss my views out there and see if anyone wanted to talk about them with me. I wanted to improve my own writing style and skills in order to keep my voice fresh.
It's been fun, and I've been happy with what I've published here.

In honor of the Dept.'s Fourth Birthday, I've settled on the theme of The Fantastic Four. I'll choose four representative posts from each of the four years and link back to them, based upon the character from the Marvel Comic series. Hope you enjoy this retrospective, and, if you're a new reader to the Dept., then you're getting...five posts in one!

Are you lucky, or what?

Mr. Fantastic--The leader and smartypants of the group, he can stretch his body into incredible lengths and shapes. In this post about Christmas falling on a Sunday in 2005, I took a big risk for a new blogger looking for a readership when I smacked around the hypocrisy of right-wing fundamentalist religious zealots. Honestly, I think it is smart. But it was a big stretch for me as I tried to find my niche.

Invisible Woman--She can bend light around her body, rendering herself invisible while generating powerful force fields. Boy oh boy, did I ever feel like my blog was doing this while I waited for comments to start appearing. So frustrating! But in 2006, I finally saw comments begin, and some posts' comments even broke into the double-digits. I have a feeling about why this post got so much traffic, though. The title and the illustration, though, may have rendered my actual writing...well, invisible. Sigh.

Human Torch--This superhero can fly while surrounded by self-generated flames. In the words of that great 21st century philosopher and heiress, P. Hilton, "That's hot." (Sorry. That hurt me just as much as it did you. What I do for laughs....) Anyway, in 2007, I got all fired up about what, exactly, the Dept. of Nance would do if it were, in fact, an actual Government Department. This post outlined very clearly what I would require and where my agenda would begin. It is my strenuous opinion that I am still greatly needed in Washington, D.C. I can start immediately.

Thing--this is the odd-looking being who possesses superhuman strength and endurance, due mostly to his organic stone-encrusted flesh. (Okay, yuck. Isn't there a really good lab-created moisturizer for that? I'm just saying.) Longtime readers here know that I routinely explore/exploit a few themes, those things which consistently irk and irritate me. This post is representative of those bothersome bugbears which I am doomed to perpetually endure and thereby lament every so often in this forum.

A word: I think the downside of being a Longevity Blogger is that perhaps newer readers never see some fun, good stuff I wrote back in the earlier days. That's one of the reasons I included the LinkWithin widget at the end of each post although it doesn't crawl very deeply into my archives, and to be honest, I'm befuddled at the so-called relationship it finds between the existing post and the past three it suggests.

So to celebrate my own 4th birthday, I'm going to start randomly grabbing an archival post from other bloggers' sites and read something from their Time Troves. I think it could be...well, Fantastic.