Today is my 5th anniversary as a blogger. How did I decide to become a blogger? It literally happened over dinner one night.
Five years ago today my family was visiting my sister in law Nancy and her husband Randall. (I was much younger then. This photo of me was taken that night).
I had been out of radio for about a year, and had just written my first draft of $everance, and another never published book "The Bald Handbook" (It's still available, publishers!). I was also writing for Lake Magazine and Shore Magazine, but I was still coming up with a ridiculous amount of additional material and didn't know what to do with it all. After producing a daily radio show for twenty years, I had gotten into the habit of coming up with a ton of content, and couldn't stop.
My brother in law Randall said to me: "You know, you really should do a blog."
"How do I do that?" I asked.
He pulled out his computer, went on blogger, had me pick a template, and before the dessert was served, I was a blogger.
Just like that.
I've since gone on to start up several other blogs and websites, and write other books and magazine articles, but I've never stopped doing this one. My daily blog has become a sort of therapy for me. It forces me to keep in touch with what's going on in the world (and specifically my areas of interest/expertise), and allows me to pontificate about the news occasionally. I like to do it first thing in the morning over my first few cups of coffee. I usually finish up my daily posts as the boys are leaving for school. The door slam is like an alarm clock telling me to stop the therapy, and return to my real writing jobs.
But I realized something this morning. Even though I have done nearly 5000 posts in the five years this blog has existed, I hadn't changed the design at all since Randall set it up for me. After five years, I figured it was about time. What do you think of the new design? Hopefully it doesn't shock you too much. It should be a lot easier to navigate than the old one.
Also, let me take this opportunity to thank everyone that has read it this year. I discovered recently that I'm approaching a milestone. Two thousand more hits (which should come before this weekend), and I'll officially have an even one million hits.
Not bad for a guy just sitting in his basement.
