I remember telling my friend, on the very first day of the literature festival we attended (6th Feb 2025), that I had woken up early that day, gone for my walk, written a blog, made breakfast, hung the clothes out to dry, and made sandwiches for our lunch before leaving home. With obvious pride, if you please.

And that’s how it went on subsequent days too except that I didn’t have clothes to dry on other days. The L&M does his own laundry.

Anyway…

Imagine my surprise when WordPress announced via a notification on the 9th of Feb that I was on a 3 day streak of writing blogs at Shail’s Nest.

Huh? How did that happen? If you write on all days, there should have been nine posts and it should have gone ‘You are on a 9 day streak at Shail’s Nest, Shail.’. So what was with the 3-day streak?

I was in a rush. So I dismissed it as some error, which I’d get back to later. When ‘later’ came around a couple of days later, I went back and counted all the posts. One less. What the heck!

I counted again. Went to my Facebook page and checked it as well as if a post that wasn’t here would somehow materialise over there. Duh! Predictably no ‘extra’ posts were found there.

Life became busy again and I had to put aside looking for the missing post. But in my mind I tried to recall which one was missing. What if anything had I written about and missed posting altogether? More importantly, if posted, WHERE WAS THE POST now?

Not in the blog page, not in scheduled posts, not in drafts, not even in the trash. Had I really messed up the dates and sent the post to some other month or worse still, another year? and how was I going to find it (like a needle in a hay stack!) when I didn’t know what it was about or what the title was?

Was WordPress the culprit who swallowed it up whole? It has never done it so far, though there is always a first time. Hence one couldn’t let it off the hook, not yet anyway.

Angana irikkumbol (while things were standing thus)….

I opened the dashboard today, to write my blog post of the day and idly glanced at the first sentence of the posts in the draft section. Something about getting up early in the morning. Huh? Hadn’t I posted it already? Why was it among the drafts? I don’t like unnecessary things cluttering space, I decided to send it packing to the trash.

But

I took another look and went ‘Gorblimey! What do we have here? Well, well, well, well, well. If it isn’t the Missing Post!’

Title-less as yet (no wonder that I couldn’t recall the title!) but fully formed and ready to be delivered, there was The Missing Post, sitting unobtrusively in my drafts folder. It had eluded me in my searches because it was about getting up early in the morning, of which I had written about already. But this was a brand new one on the same theme that I wrote as a follow up to the earlier one.

I am guessing that I must have gone off to check something or other in the kitchen after writing it, and forgotten all about posting it in my hurry to get ready and leave for the festival. I had told my friend that I had written and posted a blog post, but apparently I had actually done only the first part of the action. Who’d have thunk?

Now that the mystery of The Missing Post is solved, I can rest in peace and not have the invisible mice gnaw the insides of my head clamouring for answers!

Psst! The post shall be up later tonight or tomorrow. By the way, I am sure WordPress just heaved a sigh of relief.

©️ Shail’s Nest 2025