I’ve been using Wordpress as my blog software from the start. I’ve been happy with it for most of that time however more & more I feel like I’ve outgrown it. One of the limitations that I’ve been really feeling lately is Wordpress’s lack of real tools for handling pictures. Since summer has started I’ve taken 811 pictures. If I was to try and share even half of those with you guys using Wordpress it would take me at least a week.

I could instead get a plugin that’ll handle images better than Wordpress does natively, but sifting through the tons of plugs would also take a week.

This hassle has kept me from posting blog entries I would have otherwise published by now. That’s not ok. So this past week I’ve been playing around with different photo gallery packages. So far I haven’t one that’s exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ve found one that will work for now (realizing that “for now” may very well turn into “forever”). It’s called plogger and it’s fairly minimalistic. I’m hoping that it’ll be easily modifiable so that when I get motivated I’ll be able to tweak it a little bit. It’s not great, but it’s better than the nothing I’ve got right now.

With that I finally have a the 2nd subdomain for evolosophy. My life in pictures can now be found at p.evolosophy.com. Expect upcoming posts to link to galleries there and hopefully an increase in posts. One day I may try and write a Wordpress plugin that will allow me to integrate a gallery directly into an entry on here; that would be nice. Unlikely, but nice.

There’s nothing there yet, but hopefully in the next couple of days start seeing references to the gallery.

 

Yay! Today is (was?) the two-year anniversary of the blog!!

I’m really happy I’ve blogged these past two years as so much as happened. What a great way to capture the slivers of your life that are (sometimes) worth capturing. I’ve kept a journal for several years now and it’s fun to every so often go through it and read my thoughts from 5 years ago. This blog is proving to be interesting in a similar fashion. Well, interesting for me at least.

But I must admit, blogging is also quite a bit of work. A single entry can take a notable chunk of time. Photo editing included I can easily kill an hour on a single entry. This fact has been the main culprit behind the slow down of posts on here, and for that I apologize.

In order to properly celebrate two years of blogging I’m going to try and blog every single day for the next week. That’s right 7 days of back-to-back blogging! That should be helped by the fact that I already have 4 posts mostly-written and I’ve got another half a dozen topics in my head to try and put down in ink (ink?). But notice, I did say “try”. We should all know that if you’re looking for promises you shouldn’t look at me.

As for the future I have no plans of stopping to blog any time soon. In fact I’ve been slowly working on setting up two other blogs so that I can have multiple blogs rarely being updated. Hopefully in the next few months I’ll finish my stupid theme (made so much more difficult because of IE) and then start my second blog.

I’ve got some stuff to share, and I’m going to really try and get it all out over these next days. So hop back in a tad bit more often than you’re used to and let’s see if I can stick to it.

The previous post was my 200th post! That, my friends, is progress.

Ironically enough, and entirely (to the best of my knowledge) coincidentally it’s post #1337.

Yeah…. that’s right…

So I’ve been blogging for a year now. It’s kinda hard to believe that a year has gone by already. I started the blog to share my adventure in quitting my job, selling my house, and starting a new life. Now as I celebrate the dawn of my second year blogging I’m also welcoming the adventure that has taken too long to get here.

So the blog’s sophomore year of life will be spent, at least partially, bearing witness to the follies that are soon to befall me. But the delay of Life 2.0 has given the blog an opportunity to grow into other things as well. These 12 months have watched the blog round itself out and encompass multiple facets of my life. From mailing books to strangers, to the break-in of my house and on to this recent trip to the dentist which left me one tooth lighter.

The blog has become more than I expected it to become, yet paradoxically not quite as all-encompassing as I thought it might. Long before I ever blogged I started keeping a journal. It started as a paper cahier that sat by my bed. Once full, I graduated to a thicker moleskine that held various thoughts, ideas, and life events that I happened upon. Then I started the blog. My journal entry shortly after read, “I have officially started blogging. It may be that my days writing in this journal are coming to an end.” At the time I assumed that, with a blog, I no longer had any use for a journal; though that did not turn out to be the case. My journal is private. As much as I liked the thought of learning to be more open and share more of myself and my life, I came to realize that private thoughts and private words were not to be replaced by the blog. So the journal continued, although I did eventually move it to a digital medium (I now use a private wordpress-powered blog).

So the blog grew, the journal stayed alive, and the universe of my bloggings will soon (hopefully) be expanding. As I mentioned the other day I moved to the blog to evolosophy.com as part of a grand master plan to create additional blogs. I’d like to blog about philosophy, government, and sociology among other things. I’d also like to create a technology blog to house linux stuff, and tutorials, and who-knows what else. Maybe by the time I celebrate my 2nd anniversary of being a blogger I’ll have a zoo of blogs.

Blogging has been a learning experience as well. The first big lesson was that this blogging stuff really takes time. A single post can eat up over an hour without much effort. Consequently when life is busiest, and providing the greatest amount of blog-fodder, it also means that you have the least amount of time to actually blog. There have been too many blogs that were never given enough time to grow beyond blog-fetus; who instead ended up dying in the womb that is the wordpress dashboard. I can see why professional blogging can be a full time job.

The second big lesson has been expected, but not necessarily accepted. At the 1 year mark I have like 5 regular readers of the blog. When I started blogging I thought it was pretty cool and shared it with quite a few people. I helped half a dozen or so set up blogs of their own and when I did I always gave them the same advice: “Blog for yourself, not for other people.” I warned them against getting their hopes up and expecting 10,000 readers. “Most likely,” I explained, “hardly anyone will read your blog at first. In time you may gain followers but if you blog solely to get readers you’re going to be disappointed.” So I blog for myself, I recognize that very few people read my words. But you know what? I admit there’s a piece of me that would be happier knowing that there was even the smallest congregation of people awaiting my next post. That’s vanity I guess.

Another lesson that I’ve learned is the importance of reading my entries. I’m amazed at how many mistakes I make per post. Spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, and sometimes I write sentences that make no sense at all. I blame my short attention span, as well as blogging in public places where I people watch while I type.

Though my year of blogging words of honey hasn’t attracted the bees of the internet, I have learned a little something about the people who have chosen to follow me and those who haven’t. While I haven’t shared the blog with friends who I work with, I have shared it with the family and friends who don’t share the hallways of my 8-5. Some friends, when I told them I was blogging, didn’t even ask me for the address to the blog. Making their lack of interest as obvious as could be. Though I never voiced this out loud, I can admit to you that do read my blog that the way I have viewed certain relationships have been directly affected by the reactions to my blog.

This has been true not just for friends, but for my family as well. Historically I have been quite the “closed book” with regards to sharing my life with the fam. So when I started blogging I sent them all the address and welcomed them to read along. It has been interesting, and somewhat surprising, which family members have and which have not kept up.

So that’s been my year blogging. I’m not sure where things will go from here. I’ve spent some time checking out other software packages and may indeed one day switch to something other than wordpress. But I don’t know for sure. I’m hoping to create several more blogs. But I don’t know for sure. I’d like to think that I’ll keep blogging for years to come. But I don’t know for sure.

Though my ego would love 10,000 readers, this year has taught me that blogging just for the sake of blogging is it’s own reward. Today, I’m blogging. As long as I do your patronage is not just welcomed but appreciated. Let’s find out what these next 12 months will bring.

<3

My first year I’ve written 128 entries. That’s a little over 10/month, however I haven’t been that consistent. In March 2009 & December 2008 I wrote a measly 1 post each month, but in October 2008 I blew it up with 17posts! Those of you who’ve been following along have contributed 92 comments this year. Thanks.

Today is my official 1 year anniversary of blogging! Yay!

I was going to go into a whole spiel about the blog, and blogging, and blah blah blah. But my tooth is hurting way less. Enough so that I should feel good enough taking ibuprofen instead of Vicodin for the next few hours. That means it’s safe for me to have beer.

So tonight I go drink beer. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll pat myself on the back for one year of blogging.

Good night to all.