This past weekend--June 2, to be exact--was the 5th anniversary of this here blog thingy. I started the blog on a whim, out of frustration. It was the Bush era, and I was watching FOX "News" (sometimes I torture myself), and had heard the fourth or fifth thing in half an hour that I
knew was wrong. A lie, a misstatement, a spin, a distortion, a combination of those, whatever. My psyche was
screaming to be heard, and I didn't have an outlet?
Or
did I? At that moment, I happened to be reading a blog. And I noticed up in the corner,
"Create Blog." And, so I did.
Greenlee Gazette was chosen as the title, both as an homage to
Huffington Post (which wasn't yet the behemoth it became) and a one-sheet by the same name that I used to create and pass out in my 6th grade classroom. I began small, but it became something of an obsession. And like someone who has started a diet or hobby, I couldn't shut up about it. In the early days, I posted a couple of things every couple of days, then very soon started posting four, five, maybe ten things per day (I've settled down since then). What started as something of a personal journal very quickly became a liberal, current events, pop culture blog, occasionally sprinkled with gay rights. You know, stuff that interests
me.
That turned out to be a little too scattershot and diffuse to really ever get much of a following. Actually, when I started, I doubted I'd attract any attention at all, outside of the few people I'd told about it.
Maybe six weeks in, I discovered
SiteMeter, which keeps track of vistors, and
Ping-O-Matic which alerts the interwebs when you've posted something. Suddenly, I had an audience! Still nothing to shout about, I know. If you want to be famous online, you need a niche. Though I did come up with some semi-regular and regular features, my subject matter seems to be just too broad for mass consumption.
But that's okay! I appreciate all of the people who
have visited, and love it when I hear from them (most of the time). Recently, I've branched out to Facebook and Twitter to make accessing my posts easier, and there my numbers are even more sobering! But I'm happy to report that my good friend and contributor "Rev. Stu" at
Stupid Monkey Planet Church of Primatheism has flourished at Facebook, even though they keep banishing him to Facebook jail. As I said, you need a niche, and he's got one!
So, going forward--and I do intend to--we'll see what the future brings. We've got the Presidential election this fall, and all that entails. We've got either a ton of bragging or a mess of crying to do after that. So either way, there's going to be plenty to talk about. I'll be here. Thanks for reading, and bring your friends! While you're at it, like me (and
Stupid Monkey Planet) on Facebook and follow me on Twitter! It just takes a click
(click the buttons below).
