As a running warts-and-all tally of what someone was thinking at a given moment in time, blogs lend themselves well to retrospecting. To me it seems inevitable for someone who amasses daily thoughts into a categorized, dated journal to look back on those thoughts at some point and to say: what was that about? It seems especially inevitable at the end of a calendar year, a time when most people evaluate where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going.
In my case, there have been sweeping changes over the past year, close to all of them for the better. I landed work I don’t hate that pays me pretty well. I moved out of my parents’ house and into a cool apartment. I met new friends, some of whom helped me help myself pull out of the rut I was in, and to whom I am forever indebted. I drink significantly less than I used to. And last, but certainly not least, I found love.
My blog became less important as a creative outlet for me over the past six months or so because I was wrapped up in the whole “real life” thing, but many of the real life events would not have occurred without my blog. Hell, most of them wouldn’t have. So, it’d be silly of me to underestimate its importance to me, but I’ll acknowledge what was actually written here was less important to me than the relationships this blog has helped me form.
A list like this (aside from being nauseatingly pretentious and self-aggrandizing) only focuses on content. What’s more important to me is who I talk to rather than what is being talked about. That said, here it is:
- Debunking the Christian Nation myth - One of those rare posts that actually involved, you know, research.
- Wingnuts Who Don’t Deserve Publicity 1 - To my knowledge, this was the first post on my blog Amber linked to.
- The unsung heroes of Easter - I thought this was sort of clever.
- Where the local media’s money went last election - Another of those posts with actual research.
- To fuck and tell - Making people uncomfortable rules. The repetitive language was due to my inebriated state at the time the post was written.
- Fortune smiles upon its dumbest goddamn son - This post kicked off 20 goddamns per post week.
- Adventures in mass transit, day 1 - I thought this series was one of the better ones that appeared here the last year, not because of great writing or anything like that, but because this is the sort of thing I think blogs can publish content-wise that actually carries a little value.
- NCAA picks 2005 - ahem - kicks off - I wrote a series of fake press releases to promote my NCAA picks contest. This is probably the best one.
- My dad is a tough bastard - I managed to work Tony’s Extmeme into a post about my dad’s heart attack.
- On religion and source code - I thought this was a clever analogy.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the Blorgy, wherein eight of us swapped blogs for a week. Mae of Politics 101 wrote here, while I wrote at the GDGF’s place. This is my favorite post of Mae’s on this site, while this is my favorite post on Amber’s site.
You know, Russ Meyer, if you’re going to do something as masturbatory as a “best of me” list, you could at least have the panache to include a nice little “worst of me” section.
Barring that, hopefully Lush will pop in at some point and say something like “Every goddamn word you write is worse than the last. I fucking hate you.”
I have been quite out of it lately. I’ve been in a state of constant sleep deprivation. Last night I actually got ten hours of sleep. I feel fantastic now. I would have said something along those lines, but you took the words right out of my mouth D. We should go through and pick out the “best of our replies.” I’ll just pick all of mine. Every word I give to you is a gem.
“Fuck you and everything for which you stand!”
That’s a good one Lush. I’d have told me the same thing.
And that was purely coincidental, as I was not yet the GDGF at the time. (Didn’t everyone draw blog names out of an empty beer pitcher at Mellow Mushroom?) Furthermore, your readers should know that we kicked off the Blorgy and the Fuckery on the same day. (It was particularly funny because of the gratuitous puns going on in the Blorgy mass email. Something about, “Blogswapping does not necessarily include body fluid swapping,” or whatever.) See, the internetz can get you laid!!1!1
Chicken and egg. Whatever.
My Best Of will be when I didn’t even dignify Baby Evil’s thread-derailing make-Christians-look-bad-by-association action from a week or so back with a response.