The Origin of My Closing Phrase
Be well out there.
I launched the Thing a Day back on June 21, 2021. In the interim, I’ve written and published something here for 1,229 consecutive days (counting this one).
However, all good things must come to an end eventually, and tomorrow, October 31, 2024, I will end my current streak of daily writing with my 1,230th article. That means that I’ll write my final words on this run of the Thing a Day, and like all of my articles here, those last four words will be the same as they’ve been for a long time:
Be well out there.
That has been my sign-off phrase for Thing a Day articles for quite a while, but it hasn’t always been that way. As such, I was curious where it started.
The origin of the phrase is from a former friend who has since died. He would regularly tell me to “be well,” which is a bit of an uncommon way of saying “take care.” So, at some point, I started including it as my closing sentiment on almost all of my articles here.
But when did that start?
Well, I had to do some digging, but I’ve managed to track down the history of “Be well out there” in Thing a Day articles. Here we go.
The phrase “be well” appears in a number of articles prior to the Thing a Day, but the…
