A few days ago @livinguktaiwan issued a Three Favorite Posts Challenge. In it, she called on us to go through our posting history and pick out our favorite posts then write a post telling why.

I've been musing over this idea the past few days. I might generally divide my posts into two types: personal and teaching. My "teaching" posts usually have be sharing some knowledge I have and my maybe some research about it; usually this is haiku poetry, but sometimes other things like some teaching from Zen Buddhism that I think might provoke some thought in my readers. My "personal" posts usually begin with me talking about something in my life, like reading at night to my kids, but then even these often feature digressions where I go into teacher mode. I guess I just can't help myself; I've been a teacher for most of my life, so it kind fo pops out easily.

When I look back over what I've written, then, the "teaching" posts jump out at me as being the ones I prefer—simply because I'm really really interested in the stuff I share, so I enjoy it a lot. However, I almost always see flaws and have to supress the urge to edit the post and update it. Sometimes I give in to that urge and spend way too long updating a post from six years ago that no one ever reads nor will ever read.

Hmm... but I do have ones I like more than others. There's no way I could narrow down the list to three or six, but maybe I can highlight three that I have really enjoyed more than others. Luckily, bowsing all my old posts is pretty easy. I forget who inspired me in this (it might have been a post from @slobberchops) but I've been doing it for awhile and have most of my posts (title and URL) from the past seven years saved to a spreadsheet.

^Example

But anyway, browsing through the list I can recall most of the posts from the title, and these three jumped out at me as ones I expecially enjoyed.

First up!

Shiki's Pear Tree

I love the haiku from Shiki that I cover in this post. It stands alone as a great haiku, but it also points backwards to a more famous haiku from Bashō, which also points back to a famous event that happened centuiries prior. Basically, it leads us on a path that let's me tell a great story.

Reading through the post again, I have to resist the urge to edit... it's too short... needs to have more details here and there... I could tell more interesting things... You see, reading my old posts is dangerous for me. Must resist.

Next!

Great Learning, or Great Farting

Another haiku post. Sorry, @livinguktaiwan, I warned you. I love this haiku because it's funny. So often we have this image that the haikists of our were serious old men or women who had very serious profound views. But no, they were just like us, they enjoyed joking around.

But there are also some cultural alusions at work here, so it allowed me to go into more stories. Teaching mode, I suppose. Yeah yeah...

Next!

I have to avoid picking another haiku post here... must avoid... must avoid... Let's try for a more fun "personal"-ish post.

Introducing my Son to the 1980 Flash Gordon Movie

Oh what a great movie. Cheesy as hell, but so much fun. This post was about watching it with my boy. Since writing this post I have also shown it to my younger son and he also enjoyed it (although he didn't understand it as well; his English isn't as good as his brother's).

Anyway, there you go: three favorite posts. What do you think?

If you want to join the challenge yourself, go read this announcement post.

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.