obligatory happy birthday

Well, today is the 1 year anniversary/birthday of my blog. It all started with my first posts on August 10, 2003 as I sat around my apartment on a lazy Sunday afternoon and was ceremonously interrupted by a parade marching down my little side-street. Of course back then the name of my blog was obligatory title, which still exists out in cyber space for any of my old-school fans. All of the posts have been transferred over here, though, so don't feel like you are missing out. Ah, those young and innocent days when all of my titles were uncapitalized for self-conscious effect and when I wasn't getting troll attacks on a semi-daily basis.

I've been reading back through my archives in advance of my Blog Birthday. I've been struck by a few things. First off, I'm a really awful speller. I mean, I knew that, but even I'm blown away by how bad I get. Blogger really needs to add a spell check to save the world from my pitiful attempts and spelling. I always was surprised how frequently I used to post and how well I did concentrating on the pop culture commentary and poliblogging. I've kind of let both things flounder as I've allowed myself to wallow and seethe here on occassion. My apologies. I'll try to be better.

Overall, I meant my blogging to reinvigorate my writing sensibilities. I think it did that at times, but its also exposed a lot of my flaws as a writer. It has kept me more actively thinking about writing and I have been scribbling notes for a script to a few graphic novels I intend to write one of these days. But I never seem to have the time to get as much work done on them as I'd like.

Its also drawn me into the political blogging community, and I obviously have become quite taken with it. Also just a little bit jealous that these folks have the time and talent I lack to post so aggressively about progressive causes. I've gone back and forth on my favorites. I always love Atrios and Pandagon. I don't read Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos in the last month and have occassionally contributed diary entries there.

Over all, I don't think its been as good as I want it to be, but its had some good moments. I'm a harsh critic of myself, but a fair one, I think. I hope in the next year, I can manage to be at least a little bit better for both of my readers.