Blogiversary: SIX Years!

As I type this, we are in the waning moments of June 2, 2013. That means this is the end of the first day of my seventh year blogging at Greenlee Gazette. I started this blog--as I've often said--in frustration. Picture it: it was 6.5 years into the Bush era. Democrats, liberals and/or progressives were not just frustrated. We were the mush squeezed out of the end of a steam-rollered tube of left-wing ideology. The Karl Rove/Frank Luntz alternate reality machine had clobbered us pretty severely. We were standing up shouting "reality doesn't match what we're being told!," but we were largely ignored.

Feel free to scroll back in my archives, they're all there. It was a  vastly different time. We're now in a similar era for the opposing party, a second term (though not as deeply in), with a kinda lame-ducky vibe, and some "scandal," though nothing nearly so subversive as the Bush era crap. Nothing came of those, so that may have something to do with why Democrats aren't worked up over Obama scandal-ettes. But that's just the political backdrop. My mission as a blogger just got rooted in that fertile ground. That's not all there was to it.

An early dream, still unrealized.

Mostly, what the blog solved for me, was my a solution to my vast introspection. I'm a notorious "self talker," talking to myself to such an extent that it can be embarrassing when someone overhears. It comes from living until my early 30s on my own. It also comes from the discovery that if I say things out loud, I tend to remember them better. But once I had a blog? All of those spoken-to-no one thoughts were typed down, and--oddly enough--read by others! Woo hoo! I'm not crazy, I have readers!

Well, maybe you all are crazy too. But that's okay, we have each other. Over these last six years, the blog has been alternatively a catharsis, a burden, a diary, a platform, a creative outlet, an argument practice-zone, a lighting rod for controversy and a pet project. I have no plans of giving it up, though I often wonder if there's a way to have my cake and eat it too: keep the platform, but not be so shackled to it.

Who knows if blogging will still be "a thing" six more years down the line, or if it will be absorbed by something.  In the NewsFlesh series of zombie apocalypse books, blogging replaces journalism. I'd argue that we've already merged to a degree, possibly to the detriment of journalism. But it's also opened a world of discovery to people who needed an outlet, and helped inspire people who may not have sought out traditional journalism. I think on the whole it has been a positive development. I know that I'm inspired to carry on. And I'm sure I'll be here next year with another update.

In the meantime, thank you for reading, and please come back and bring your friends!