Five years of blogging

Today my blog celebrates it’s 5th birthday.

Ahh… they grow up so fast don’t they.

In all honesty, I had a static HTML “blog” a couple months before that — but we won’t count that as anything official.

I started my blog out on Blogger.com with my first post: So I gave in (see it on Blogger)

After a couple years on Blogger, I switched to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog in Feb. 2007 and have never looked back.

And since that first blog post, I’ve gone through numerous designs and layouts and my blogs taken on many different functions as well.

I shared my newspaper columns and random videos and I’ve blogged about faith, politics, dinner, life, politics, church, technology, local news, and all sorts of random goodness.

Just check out this list of random keywords people typed into search engines to find my site:

• enormous butt
• showing off my wife
• nigerian desert
• cynthia izzzzzaaaaaguuuuuuuiiiiiiireeeeeeeeee
• steak
• dooney da priest
• weird things to do in walmart
• britain is repossessing the u.s.a.

And yet, wanna know what brings the most people to my blog?

Several posts I wrote about changes in the on-air staff at WFAA Channel 8 (the Dallas ABC affiliate).

Just look at the all time top 5 posts for my blog (since I started tracking in Sept 2007)…

• Justin Farmer to leave WFAA
• Justin Farmer’s out Brad Hawkins is in… for now
• Jerry’s not happy with WFAA and Cynthia Izaguirre
• Jeff Brady in Brad Hawkins out at WFAA Channel 8’s Daybreak
• On search for the Music Machine

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I should start blogging about WFAA all the time.

But if you’re (still) reading this, you likely didn’t come here looking for WFAA news.

Something else attracted you — and you’ve come back.

And for that I thank you.

Blogging is an odd hobby.

While there are millions of blogs on the web, I only know a handful of people in real life who blog on a regular basis (more than a few times a month).

Blogging is something you definitely have to enjoy doing because it’s often a thankless “job.”

And while I’d blog if no one read what I wrote, there’s great satisfaction in knowing something you wrote or shared touched someone, or impacted them, or challenged their thinking.

So whether you’ve been reading since April 30, 2005, or just found me last week; whether you’ve left 25 comments, or none; whether you’ve subscribed to my RSS feed, or just click on a bookmark in your browser each day — I thank you.

I hope that as my blog (aka my mind dump) continues for the next 5, 10, 15 years (or more), my words will be gracious, we’ll challenge one another and we’ll grow in new exciting ways.

I will continue to strive to create a space of grace online, while offering real relationships with my readers and offering relevant truth.

Thanks again.

I leave you with a poem from Tall Skinny Kiwi…

how shall we then blog?

with smile we publish glad tidings daily
with giggle we reveal our mundane humanity
with sigh we mirror the tragedies of broken people
with shout we send healing words through a keyboard
with bitten lip we offer more cheek to those who despise us
with double-take we acknowledge the publisher on the screen
with mumbling we paint mysteries with strange palette
with softened voice we offer answer from ourselves
with whisper we speak beyond ourselves
with twinkle we welcome past friends

to reawaken childhood dreams
to publish our journeys
to record our stories
to be noticed
to be heard
to point to
others
who
must
be heard also.

here’s to the next five years and beyond!