{"id":5573,"date":"2010-04-30T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-30T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2010-04-29T22:00:57","modified_gmt":"2010-04-30T03:00:57","slug":"five-years-of-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/five-years-of-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Five years of blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today my blog celebrates it&#8217;s 5th birthday.<\/p>\n<p>Ahh&#8230; they grow up so fast don&#8217;t they.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIn all honesty, I had a static HTML &#8220;blog&#8221; a couple months before that &#8212; but we won&#8217;t count that as anything official.<\/p>\n<p>I started my blog out on Blogger.com with my first post: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/techno\/podcasts\/so-i-gave-in\/\">So I gave in<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/jdblundell.blogspot.com\/2005\/04\/so-i-gave-in.html\">see it on Blogger<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>After a couple years on Blogger, I switched to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog in Feb. 2007 and have never looked back.<\/p>\n<p>And since that first blog post, I&#8217;ve gone through numerous designs and layouts and my blogs taken on many different functions as well.<\/p>\n<p>I shared my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/belton-journal\/\">newspaper columns<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/video\/\">random videos<\/a> and I&#8217;ve blogged about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/emergent\/\">faith<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/huckabee\/\">politics<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/dinner\/\">dinner<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/life\/\">life<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/obama\/\">politics<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/church\/\">church<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/technology\/\">technology<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/tag\/wfaa\/\">local news<\/a>, and all sorts of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/my-wife-showing-off\/\">random goodness<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just check out this list of random keywords people typed into search engines to find my site:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>enormous butt<\/li>\n<li>showing off my wife<\/li>\n<li>nigerian desert<\/li>\n<li>cynthia izzzzzaaaaaguuuuuuuiiiiiiireeeeeeeeee<\/li>\n<li>steak<\/li>\n<li>dooney da priest<\/li>\n<li>weird things to do in walmart<\/li>\n<li>britain is repossessing the u.s.a.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And yet, wanna know what brings the most people to my blog? <\/p>\n<p>Several posts I wrote about changes in the on-air staff at WFAA Channel 8 (the Dallas ABC affiliate). <\/p>\n<p>Just look at the all time top 5 posts for my blog (since I started tracking in Sept 2007)&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/justin-farmer-to-leave-wfaa\/\">Justin Farmer to leave WFAA<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/justin-farmers-out-brad-hawkins-is-in-for-now\/\">Justin Farmer&#8217;s out Brad Hawkins is in&#8230; for now<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/jerrys-not-happy-with-wfaa-and-cynthia-izaguirre\/\">Jerry&#8217;s not happy with WFAA and Cynthia Izaguirre<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/newsentertainment\/jeff-brady-in-at-wfaa-channel-8s-daybreak\/\">Jeff Brady in Brad Hawkins out at WFAA Channel 8&#8217;s Daybreak<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/misc\/on-a-search-for-the-music-machine\/\">On search for the Music Machine<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If I didn&#8217;t know any better, I&#8217;d say I should start blogging about WFAA all the time.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re (still) reading this, you likely didn&#8217;t come here looking for WFAA news. <\/p>\n<p>Something else attracted you &#8212; and you&#8217;ve come back. <\/p>\n<p><strong>And for that I thank you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blogging is an odd hobby. <\/p>\n<p>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).<\/p>\n<p>Blogging is something you definitely have to enjoy doing because it&#8217;s often a thankless &#8220;job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And while I&#8217;d blog if no one read what I wrote, there&#8217;s great satisfaction in knowing something you wrote or shared touched someone, or impacted them, or challenged their thinking.<\/p>\n<p>So whether you&#8217;ve been reading since April 30, 2005, or just found me last week; whether you&#8217;ve left 25 comments, or none; whether you&#8217;ve subscribed to my RSS feed, or just click on a bookmark in your browser each day &#8212; I thank you.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;ll challenge one another and we&#8217;ll grow in new exciting ways.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I will continue to strive to create a space of grace online, while offering real relationships with my readers and offering relevant truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thanks again. <\/p>\n<p>I leave you with a poem from Tall Skinny Kiwi&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com\/tallskinnykiwi\/2008\/08\/how-shall-we-th.html\">how shall we then blog<\/a><\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>with <em>smile<\/em> we publish glad tidings daily<br \/>\nwith <em>giggle<\/em> we reveal our mundane humanity<br \/>\nwith <em>sigh<\/em> we mirror the tragedies of broken people<br \/>\nwith <em>shout<\/em> we send healing words through a keyboard<br \/>\nwith <em>bitten lip<\/em> we offer more cheek to those who despise us<br \/>\nwith <em>double-take<\/em> we acknowledge the publisher on the screen<br \/>\nwith <em>mumbling<\/em> we paint mysteries with strange palette<br \/>\nwith <em>softened voice<\/em> we offer answer from ourselves<br \/>\nwith <em>whisper<\/em> we speak beyond ourselves<br \/>\nwith <em>twinkle<\/em> we welcome past friends<\/p>\n<p>to reawaken childhood dreams<br \/>\nto publish our journeys<br \/>\nto record our stories<br \/>\nto be noticed<br \/>\nto be heard<br \/>\nto point to<br \/>\nothers<br \/>\nwho<br \/>\nmust<br \/>\nbe heard also. <\/p>\n<p><strong>here&#8217;s to the next five years and beyond!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today my blog celebrates it&#8217;s 5th birthday. Ahh&#8230; they grow up so fast don&#8217;t they.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[1005,983,949,1408,3437,875],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-reflections","tag-anniversary","tag-birthday","tag-blog","tag-blogging","tag-future","tag-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1rT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}