A Small Victory

Blogaversary: history of my blog, Part 1

Sometime last February, I can't remember the exact date, I discovered the world of weblogs. They fascinated me, these daily devotions to events and news and all things personal. I can do this, I thought. So I did.

So sometime last February, just about a year ago, I put a cheesy, error-filled page up on Tripod, and when their banner ads and my idiocy collided, I left them and went to Freeservers. I paid a measly sum each month for Freeservers to take their banner ads off, therefore eliminating my prediliction for duplicating such ads by mistake.

The Freeservers portion of the blog stayed up for a while. It went through a trillion redesigns, a myriad of Front Page Express inspired mistakes and crashes, and changes that were more than cosmetic. Somewhere along the line, I became less and less of a link/news/comment blog and started to write on a more personal level.

September came along and I had the Banned Books Project, which garnered a lot of hits and attention, which in turn started sucking up my free bandwidth allotment. I also realized at this time what a horror Front Page Express is, and signed up for Blogger so I could post without causing javascript errors every time.

September 11 came and went, and I posted maniacally. People were linking to my personal stories in droves, and Freeservers took my site down for exceeding their bandwidth. I made the move over to Dreamhost that day. I had just been looking for a reason to get my own domain, anyhow. I installed Greymatter, redesigned the site again, and pretty much left it that way until last weekend.

I look back and see how much my writing has changed in a year. How the flow and direction of this blog has changed. I worried in the beginning that people only wanted links and fun and political rants. And maybe that is what the people still want. But I stopped caring. Sometime during September, I stopped writing for whoever was reading and started writing for me. I really think that improved the quality of what is put down in this space. It certainly has improved the quality and quantity of my readers, I think. I'm comfortable here. I'm at ease with just taking whatever is crowding my head and throwing it down on the keyboard for all to see. I've become more comfortable with putting myself out there, allowing myself to be vulnerable and venting my every emotion. This has been, and will continue to be, my catharsis. The fact that others read it, and comment on what I write, well that just makes it all the better. It's always better when you think someone is actually listening to what you have to say. Even if they don't agree. I've got about 300 sets of eyes "listening" to me each day here, and whether they validate me or antogonize me or rebut me or use their words to wrap their arms around me or even punch me, I am appreciative of all of it.

It's odd in a way that I picked that very year, that very time to start a blog. This was probably the most eventful 12 months of my life in a long time. Emotionally, they ran the gamut. I don't know how I would have held up without the space in which scream and cry and laugh. I've made some very dear friends, some very smart enemies and I can honestly say, weblogging has changed my life in an extraordinary way.

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