One Year Of Blogging

"A slow evolution..."

This week I'll be celebrating one year as a blogger.

It hardly seems that long to me…does it to you?

Although blogging was around alot longer than me, in this past year we've seen Blogs become an international phenomena--taking down major media figures Dan Rather and Eason Jordan and possibly influencing (or preventing major media from influencing) the outcome of the national election.

The members of the traditional "exempt" media (TV and newspapers) are quaking in their boots, and there is a national debate as to where blogs are going and what influence they will have on our nation and the world in the future.

I say A GREAT DEAL.

Blogging removes the barriers previously present that prevented average citizens from publishing. Heck, I had nearly 6,000 "hits" this past year, 4,000 of them since January--that would have been impossible twenty years ago.

In my efforts to look at my own statistics, the Blogger software is a bit overwhelmed with my prolific production, but it tells me that I've written over 370 posts since January 1st, and I suspect that I have somewhere near 600 total postings since last August 10th, the day I first posted to "What I'd Liked To Have Said." I also figure that I've written over 1000 pages total, not including all of the words, postings, and pages delivered over at my cooking Blog, The Redneck Gourmet.

When I was in high school or college and a teacher told me that I would be required to produce an average of three written pages each day in a class, I would have bitched and complained and ran far, far away from their supervision. I was gonna be an Engineer, and Engineers didn’t have to write. Of course my mother knew better when she insisted that I take a typing class in high school.

Thanks Mom.

The funny thing is that today I do it (my writing) voluntarily, without classroom credit or monetary compensation—because I like it, even if nobody else reads it. It does help the old ego to have readers, however.

I appreciate my regular readers, many of whom I know, and most of whom I don’t know, and I hope that you will keep coming back to read what is rattling around in my head and trying to come out of my mouth.

This next year will probably see a few changes, but the core ideas behind my blogging will be the same. There is pressure to add BlogAds and other commercial elements, but I really hate ads and as long as Blogger is free and I don’t mind my wallet being so empty I guess I’m going to avoid ads. If I do go commercial, it will only be after my traffic increases markedly and even then, it will have to have some class or I won’t do it.

Any way, I’ll be looking at my site design and possibly making a few changes to the appearance, but you can definitely look forward to choice commentary on whatever “crappola” comes my way and I promise to not pull any punches.

Hopefully you'll learn something you didn't already know, and I hope that my readers will teach me a thing or two also.

Thanks Y’all,

VRRIII