I'm still here

Six years ago today, I opened a Blogger account and made the first post on what would eventually become the 1200+ post blog you see before you today.

I am going to go on record as saying that even after all that time, I still love blogging. It seems increasingly irrelevant in the day and age of Facebook and Twitter. Writing something longer than a 140-character tweet or a 420-character Facebook status update seems so last season. Everybody seems to be on the social networking sites now and going to a blog to read something just seems to be so much less on the cultural radar than it used to be. And over the last few months, I've had more internal blogging drama than you can shake a stick at (most of which I have made a concerted effort to keep OFF the blog).

I tell the story a lot of how a friend of mine, when I said I was starting a blog, predicted that it would last no more than 2 months. And when I started blogging, I wasn't sure what I would write about, so I wondered if they weren't on to something. Although I had journaled a lot in college, I had kind of fallen off the journaling bandwagon by then and I wondered if I would have similar (lack of) follow-through with blogging. But I'm happy to say that much like Barbra Streisand said in 1994 "Good times and bum times/I've seen them all and my dear/I'm still here."

Blogging for me is a funny exercise. It is the most natural extension of me that I know of - I tell people a lot that if you really want to get to know who I am and what I think about, read my blog. When I meet new people and I feel like there's something more than just a casual acquaintance lurking in there, I will frequently give them the link. Oddly enough. as eager as I am to give the link to new and old friends, I am also hesitant, especially now that the blog is so huge and intimidating. I'm also intensely private about it as I have detailed before in previous posts. I don't give the link to just everyone and sometimes I worry that people will read what's written here and say "ok, he's just too strange for words." But I suppose those people probably weren't worth my time anyway.

Many people blog with a purpose - I'm not sure that I do. A good example of "blogging with a purpose" are the large number of music bloggers I have met over the years and whose blogs I read, link to and enjoy. They have features and themes and I am frequently very envious of that. I wish I had that kind of discipline. But I'm really not that kind of blogger. Sure, I write a lot about the music that I'm listening to, but I would find that limiting myself to any one topic would be ultimately unsatisfying. One friend of mine likens reading my blog to reading an online diary, which may be true but is not really intentional. While it may read that way, rest assured that I am aware (perhaps hyperaware) of the difference between journaling and blogging.

So on my blog's birthday, I want to thank everyone who reads. I would continue to write in this space even if no one ever read it, but I will say that knowing that people read this does my heart good. Sure, I get a lot more feedback for shit I post on Facebook, but in the end, this is about me. And how many places in your life can it really and truly be all about you?

Ultimately, I may not know what this blog is about, but I do know that it needs a special locker for the hat.