four...
It's the obligatory "this is how old my blog is" post today, so get ready.
Four years ago, in an office on the fifth floor of a glass building, there sat a weird little dude with an axe to grind. He was getting laid off from his first tech job, and he wasn't happy about it, but there wasn't really anything he could do about it at the time. On the way to work that steamy July morning in Fort Worth, TX. He heard a story on NPR about something called a "blog." These things were just beginning to be mildly popular.
The little fat dude already had a modest web presence, and had for some time. His narcissistic tendencies were already being fulfilled by showing the world exactly what he thought they should know about him. But here as another way to force his opinions on people! "How exciting! Another way to get people to listen to my ranting and ravings!" he thought in his tiny little mind.
So, there he sat, having completed his minimal morning duties, and having gathered his coffee and spoken to a few others in the office, and joined Blogger. He immediately started writing utter crap, and posting it to the internet's giant wall of doodlings, for all to see and judge.
This went on for far too long. Almost three years, in fact. Slowly his infantile writing changed. I suppose that, finally, in his mid-thirties, the dude started to mature just a bit. Ranting and raving and yaking on about nothing finally wore him down until, many years after he started his blog, he changed it entirely. It was one of those moments that comes rarely in a mans life, when he looks back on the past, accepts it, and decides to move on toward the fearful but exciting future. Because of this sudden change, in November of 2005, he reworked the blog entirely, changed it's focus, and actually started trying to write stuff that was, to his mind, good, or at least better than before. Enough of the childish rantings of that previous life, it was time for something better.
He started to smile more. He started to write better. He even began to like some of the things that he wrote, as self serving as that sounds. The point is, however, that he began to be pleased with himself. One of his favorite posts is thanksgiving, 1979..., which is about some of the last memories of his Grandfather, and also includes some writing of his mother's. He was touched by his own writing in this one. He has used music and lyrics to inspire his writing, as in one called memory..., another of his favorites. There are other's he could mention, but the archive links are there. Some are good, some are not so good. Browse them if you wish...he wouldn't mind it...
And so we come to the present day, four years on. He's gained a few readers, been inspired by others like Scott, Brandon, Peefer, and Robert, to name just a few. There are so many good ones out there that there are days he feels inadequate. But then he looks back over his own writing, and enjoys what he's become over the years, and wonders what he might become in the future, and decides to continue.
This rampant self promotion continues, this narcissism, this seeking of approval and glowing comments, this "I have something to say that I think is important", this quiet corner of the world where he sits and says "I am here, and I matter", will continue. This open and evolving book of him, of me, will go on into the future, until it doesn't matter any more.
