Bloggiversary!

Note: Before we actually get to the meat of this post, I have to gripe a little about something. Since the Dawn of the Internet, we have been creating lots and lots of new words. This is proper and fitting, given that we now have to describe lots of concepts that didn't exist before. But if we're going to have to create a whole bunch of new words anyway, can't we make them sound nice? I mean, it makes sense to make up a word that's a contraction of web log, given that "web" is a (sensible) euphemism for the internet, and a "log", well--the English language has used that word to refer to a written record since at least 1679. But Blog? Can anyone think of a less euphonious neologism than Blog? I mean, that's one ugly word, there.

And the term meaning anniversary of a blog that I've seen bandied about is Bloggiversary. If the word blog is ugly by itself, that word is so monstrously bad that it demands that we stand back in awe of its awe-inspiring awfulness. Who thinks these things up, and why isn't it legal to throw rocks at them?

Sigh. I suppose not all English terms can be like Cellar Door.

(Now just wait: I'm about to be visited by partisans of Esperanto....)


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On with your regularly scheduled blog post.

Today is my one-year Bloggiversary! (ugh.) That's right! One year ago today, I decided to start my own blog, so that I wouldn't be continually needling my wife about what she needed to be blogging about.

Actually, it was one year ago yesterday that I decided to do it. But I had a little trouble with Wordpress, and gave up for the night; and the next day, I just decided to go with Blogger, since that's what my wife was using and we knew how it worked.

And I've done more writing in the last year than I have ever done in any previous year of my life. That's right, even when I was in college.

(I was a lousy student. In retrospect, I have no idea how I managed to get enough work done to graduate. Of course, now that I've just written that, my wife is giving me all kinds of helpful reminders: "Remember, you didn't have a job then...." Um, yes. Thank you.)

Well, I didn't keep to my one-post-a-day benchmark. Especially moving on into summer, I found myself beset by ennui, nihilism, and just plain writers' block. And eventually, I started hearing the Voice on my right shoulder saying: You should probably be spending a little more time with your family, you know. And then the Voice on my left shoulder whispered: You know, the world will keep revolving if you don't do it, just this once. And you might actually get more sleep. And besides, no one's reading you anyway.

And then the voice behind me would say: Tim, I've got to use the computer tonight.

So, with my ego, superego, and id all telling me the same thing--not to mention my wife--I started to slack off.

I still think I did pretty well, though. In the last year I managed--not counting this one--to post 332 times. And since I put up the hit counter two days later, I've gotten on the order of 24,068 hits--or roughly 66 hits per day.

Of course, about a dozen per day or so were from me, checking to see how many hits I got. :-)

(And I haven't counted up the comments I've received. I haven't seen an easy way of getting Blogger to report that to you.)


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So, where to?

Well, I think I'm going to try to keep up this one-post-per-day benchmark, but without killing myself to meet it. (Translation: don't expect quite as many posts as last year, when I occasionally came pretty close to killing myself. Primarily from lack of sleep....)

Furthermore, when I read some of my older posts, I notice something very disconcerting: they're so witty! They're so insightful! They're so full of the joy of living, yet colored with a wry, sophisticated humor. I read them, and I think, Man, I wish I could write like that. It's so much better than the dreck that I've been churning out lately.... And then I get all depressed, and I wonder, what changed?

I think it's all the Happy Boy's fault.

No, seriously. When I started writing this thing, he was a cute, lovable six-month-old, who was giggling, playful, and non-mobile. Now, he's turned into a cute, lovable, devious, scheming, opinionated, always-hungry (not always for food, though), highly-mobile eighteen-month-old Boy. By the time we get him into bed, Tonya and I feel like we've been in a wrestling match. (Tonya: "We have!") So when I finally get in front of the computer and try to think of something to blog about, I don't often have much mental energy left.

You'd be surprised how much energy it takes to do irony.

Ah, well. We knew what we were getting into when we decided to have him. ;-) At any rate, I've enjoyed doing this thing over the last year, even when getting in comment-duels with pompous know-it-alls. And I hope to be doing this for quite a bit longer (all except for the pompous know-it-alls, of course; but you can't venture out onto the internet without running into them).

My wife thinks all this writing may help me land a second career someday. I'm not so ambitious, but it's an interesting thought....