On April 14th, 2013 this blog was created. Gop the literature loving frog in the coconut shell was the anchor for the blog thought up by me but brilliantly brought to life by that reclusive author living in the south of Thailand (Click here to check out his hefty author page – buy a book or two if you are a Gop fan, you won’t regret it). That makes today Gop’s birthday to the world. He’s gotta be at least forty in frog years and still hasn’t quit smoking or stopped reading paper books. He’s old school and low tech. I like Gop’s philosophy on life although I might have a hard time pinning a name to it.

Four years is a long time. When you are younger it seems like an eternity. Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year of high school. A lifetime in the rear-view mirror. Another four years and I was already a junior at university. I took my time to graduate. What was the rush to get into the real world? Another four years and I had already lived in Chico, San Francisco, Mountain View, and San Jose, California. Now four years clip by as Bruce Springsteen wrote in 1984 in Glory Days, “In the wink of a young girls eye.” Was it really written over thirty-three years ago?

By now I figure I have earned a B.A. in blogging. The thought occurs to me to fold up shop and move on to something else. But I have learned a few things about Gop in the past four years. He’s not a worrier. His coconut shell is not turned upside down. It faces the world. As a result Gop’s world is bigger than most. Of course it helps that he reads and we’ve never figured out, exactly, what his smoke blend consists of. As my wife often tells me, “We don’t have to know everything.”

Truth be told I am proud of this blog without being too proud. It matters to me what some people think of it and doesn’t matter to me what others may or may not think of it. But mostly it matters to me what I think of it. And I think it is worth preserving and worth continuing although probably on a more limited basis than in past years. I’ll strive for quality over quantity. Interesting people, literature, and music help make my world go around. I’ll keep trying to pay forward all the kindnesses that have been done for me. It’s a good expression, one might even call it a philosophy, paying it forward.

I’ll keep this short and simple. Tens of thousands of visitors have stopped by this blog in the past four years, either on purpose or because Google brought them here by mistake in their quest to find Thai girls wearing university uniforms. That’s more than enough for me. So I’ll keep doing here what I have been doing for the past four years, creating a blog that I would want to read. There are a lot of choices and a lot of distractions in today’s world. Thank-you to all the readers who stop by from time to time.

My “About Page” written on April 14th 2013, refers to a quote by a famous economist. It’s one of my favorite quotes: “In the long run we are all dead.” John Maynard Keynes

Choose your run wisely.

And Happy Thai New Year from Thailand Footprint