A Place Called Blogsville (Prologue)

Waxing Sentimental
I usually do a special post on the anniversary of this space, which today marks six years for AYBABTU. However I’ve never really taken the time to talk about why I got started blogging, and how my concept and awareness of it as a medium evolved to get me to the place I was six years ago today.

I think I’m gonna do that now.

It’s been awhile since I’ve written a post like this. Heck — it’s been awhile since I’ve written much of anything at all. But I’m not gonna worry about that; not right now; hopefully not ever again. Seven months of forced self-employment has taught me a lot about priorities — not to mention the value of melancholy as a state of mind for me.

See, navel-gazing is an art form that comes pretty naturally to me, and to be perfectly honest, has always been the basis of this blog, whether I like it or not. I don’t write 5-Steps To a Happier ‘X’-kind-of-posts. I write long, thoughtful essays about my life, my memories, and the people I love.

After struggling to morph my style into something more akin to the today’s ‘grip it and rip it’ mentality of ‘useful’ blogging, I’ve finally decided I might as well go with what I know.

I’m a thinker, and this is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately; somewhat initiated by the previous Happy Birthday post to my friend, Michael, who is the greatest personification of what I value the Web as a social medium to be. The fact that he and I could become friends, coming from different parts of the country, with totally different backgrounds (not to mention, upon initial introduction, thinking that each other was sort of a jerk) is simply amazing to me, and not to be taken lightly. It’s something to be celebrated.

However, in the yin/yan of relationship, where there is celebration on one end of the dynamic, the opposing emotion can present itself just as powerfully on the other. The mourning of friendships that die from malnutrition is often sad; even more so because sometimes the death is inevitable.

This is a look back at the beginnings of my personal experience with blogging as a social medium and community-generator. It took place at a time when social media was in its infancy, and its effect, decidedly more dramatic — in my opinion — than it is even today.

It’s about a place that has always been my touchstone as a participant in the SocMed phenomenon; a place that revealed a side of me I never knew existed; a place called Blogsville


Next: In A Blog of My Own (Revisited)