First off, Merry Christmas to those of you who also celebrate, and Happy upcoming New Year to all. Let’s make 2019 a great one!
Second off, the announcement for 2019. Don’t call it a resolution. My goal is to get back into blogging regularly RIGHT HERE on this website. Ideally, I would like to post something every single day in 2019. That’s a tall order, I know, but it’s very feasible if I don’t post content directly to social media. For those that know me, I can see you scratching your head as you are thinking, “but you ARE social media!” That’s the problem, which brings me to my next point.
2018 was the year I stepped WAY back from “social media”. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, podcasting & blogging were either placed on the back burner or removed from the stove entirely. Come summertime, beyond an occasional Instagram (@NaptownBuzz) photo (I love photojournalism), I was burnt out and needed a break from content creation.
On the social media & “news” consumption front, the constant politics, negativity, and nonsense of people being offended by anything & everything wore thin and I had enough. I rarely check Twitter & Facebook these days, and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon. The same is true for any “news” sources. Frankly, I don’t care. Selfish and cold, maybe. Sorry, not sorry. Life is too short to worry with that. Let me expand upon that.
A few weeks ago our dear friend Bill Bean passed away at the age of 51. FIFTY-ONE YEARS OLD. I myself turned forty this year. My grandfathers passed away at the ages of 68 & 80. At best I’m probably near the top of the hill of life. The climb up has been way faster than your 10-year-old self could have ever imagined. I don’t say this to be a downer, but to strike home the fact that life is indeed too short. And this is why I’ve stepped back from social media and news in general. I don’t need that stress in my life over things that aren’t worth my energy and that don’t really interest me.
Back to Bill, we first met in early 1995. There are stories that could be told and fill volumes, but today I’m drawn to one particular subject. Blogging. The year was 2002. Bill & I (and the family as a whole) were involved with a new house church startup. I was the “web guy” (imagine that). Bill came to me asking if I had heard of blogging and something called “Movable Type“. The answers were “yes” & “I’ll look into it”. Before you knew it we were running Movable Type (MT) on our website and most of the church all had their own blogs. Fast forward to 2004 and MT changed licensing to where it’d be cost prohibitive to run all of the blogs. Then WordPress (a fork of the open source “b2” blogging software) hit the scene as a response, and that’s what I moved everything to. This led to me starting Watershed Studio in 2004, getting into podcasting (5 shows and counting) and then starting Naptown Buzz in 2010. The rest, as they say, is history. All from Bill simply inquiring about blogging back in 2002.
Now that you have the quick backstory on my blogging history we can talk about 2019.
Blogging has had a large effect on my life, that’s for sure. But for a few years now I’ve wanted to get back into blogging on a personal level. Naptown Buzz is amazing and a blast to do, but it’s a brand and has topical & geographical constraints that my own online world does not. Here, like on my personal social media pages, I’m free to talk about anything and push the envelope if I want to. Freedom.
As far as the content goes, I have some ideas already. Some posts will be longer normal blog posts such as this. Others will be quick random thoughts (like tweets), a photo or a link. And I’ll throw some short podcast & video clips at you on occasion too. Some days will have one post, other days might have a dozen. Anything goes content-wise, but I will organize it. I know that some people hate the non-topical “shotgun” approach to blogging, so if that’s you, no offense taken. Find a topical blog that suits your needs.
Now on with the show!
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