I wrote this blog like I've written a lot of other blogs, walking around my kitchen with a coffee., dogs are playing, shouting in the background.
This is number 4000.
If I had written this daily, it would have taken almost 11 years, but I missed a few and had some gaps, so it's been well over 12 since we started.
I'm proud of this daft little thing that goes now every single day, a habit I created for myself that I copied from someone else.
I made myself a promise, against the edge of everything in my character, to continue a project on a day-by-day basis, just building a body of work, however insignificant and trivial and nonsensical that work is, until it became something bigger than its individual parts.
As this posts, I'll be dressed as an elf travelling with my family to the charity ball, a place of absolute wonder and community and sharing and joy and happiness and friendship, a little bit like what I hoped that this little piece of writing would be.
I have kept my promise (more or less) to write this almost every single day to myself as a memory of where I was, what it felt like and what I saw when all I can do is sit in my chair and wish I was here.
I've broken a promise, though.
When we posted it 3500 some 18 months ago, I promised a book; I promised the book a little bit like Seth Godin's massive collection of blog posts that he produced with the photographer Thomas Hawk.
I promised I would be ready, and I promised if you signed up, you would get one. And it's not ready, and the promise is broken, but the promise is only broken for a little while because now, as luck and wonder would have it, my friend and artist Stuart Reekie now works with me at The Campbell Clinic, and he is my Thomas Hawk.
Stuart's photography is extraordinary and has been extraordinary with me, and for me, longer than this blog has been in existence.
He has photographed things in my life and my work for the longest time, and he now works with us (not exclusively as a photographer).
So, the book is alive and well, just a little behind.
It will be our piece of art, our gift to the world.
If you decide to sign up early (and if you already have, I have your name), then you will have your name inside the book and a handwritten inscription to go with it.
There will be 250 copies of this book published, but there will only be 200 for sale; the rest will be gifted to people who have been huge and influential to both Stuart and I, people who have helped us and shaped us and dragged us along the path.
The other 200 will sell for about £100 a book, and every single penny of that will go to charities that we will talk about.
Once it's gone, it's gone.
I'll talk about it more in these pages as we go forward, as Stuart and I select the photographs to go with the words and as I select some of the blogs from the last 4000 to be included for their poignance and significance to both of us.
So, another promise was made, another one I hope that I will not break.
As I said, as you read this, if you read it, when it is published, I will be at the charity ball, and it will be well underway.
All we ever wanted to do was create a community to share our journey with people and to try and help make things a little better here and there, positively influencing one or two souls as a testament to the people who influenced us.
Thank you if you ever read a word of this in the past 4000, and thank you even more if you ever commented or emailed me; I have read every one (and cried to more than I would care to remember).
11 years from now, I will be just about to turn 64.
If I am still here and have any breath in my lungs, we will tick over to 8000. I would love for you to come with me on the journey to see what we can do, what can happen, who we can help, and who we can meet.
Maybe see you on the road.
HT to Marie, Hayley F, and Millie S, the three people who brought this blog into reality and continued to make it work on a day-to-day basis. Without whose help it would never have existed.
Thanks.
Blog Post Number - 4000
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