All the 3s

Some respite at the end of a traumatic and tiring week came on Sunday at 11.27pm, when this blog's page view meter clicked over to 3.333333 million. Such have been the travails of the past two months, I even neglected to mention the blog's seventh anniversary at the end of February. Still, the meter just keeps on turning over, by 1000-1200 a day, often much more, mostly as typewriter enthusiasts look to find a way to reattach a drawband. I've also been partially converted to Instagram in the last nine months - it's far more about mere glancing than learning anything (indeed, I hardly ever read any of the captions or exchanges), yet it does offer some interesting insights - one being that the typewriter world, at least for me, seems to be rapidly expanding by the day. Where once the Typosphere offered an accurate gauge on the growing passion for typewriter use, now Instagram provides at look at other aspects of the demand for typewriters. I'm often left feeling I'm now a little out of touch.
The last year has been, for me, the very best of times and the very worse of times. On our first anniversary, my partner found she had ovarian cancer. It turned our tiny world upside down, and of course completely demolished any grand plans I had for my 70th year, including a trip to New Zealand. The main thing for me now is to help her as much as I possibly can to get well again - everything else, typewriters included, pales into utter insignificance compared to that goal.
My new life, as of March 2017, will explain why this blog's posts declined to 41 last year compared to 145 in 2016 and 248 in 2015, and between 400-500 posts in the previous four years. But let me stress that I have in no way lost my love for typewriters and their history. In the past week or so my blogging input has started to lift again, and in some small way I can thank Instagram for a renewal of enthusiasm of blogging. Time, and certainly not a lack of material, remains the greatest deterrent to putting posts together, but I do hope to be more a regular contributor to typewriter lore in the months ahead. Some of the posts may relate to many typewriter-related events that occurred last year, but so be it.
My partner and I are both being super positive in these unfortunate circumstances. Our longer-term aim is to get to England next year, to catch up with Richard Polt, if he visits there, as well as meet Piotr Trumpiel, Rob Bowker, the Chapmans and others in the British typewriting scene. So our catchcry is "onward and upward", and certainly having typewriters as an obsession helps provide a pleasant, if only occasional, diversion in these trying times.