One Thousand Posts Later

The internet is truly an amazing thing. Only the internet can take someone with no influence, voice or audience and give him that and more. I’ve told my story a few times before but I’ll recap it again for new readers (and damn, there’s a lot of those lately).

In the Spring of 2004, I decided to try my hand at blogging. It was meant to be personal, and was never meant to be large. And it certainly was never expected to be read by many people. It was started with the intention of documenting the process I had planned for entering the Navy, going through basic training and on with the career choice at hand.

Almost two years later, this site is by far not the largest but it is read by the finest. Some notable attention has been given to this site, whether through commenting or link backs, (or articles I’ve written) by Steve Rubel, noted PR and blog guru, Darren Rowse of Problogger, Duncan Riley (formerly of the Blog Herald), Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo, and the list goes on. Politicians, Developers, Bloggers, Venture Capitalists, Technologists and Religious leaders have all been through these doors at one time or another. Many have returned.

There have been 505 distinct commenters (by name), 3100 Comments, 200k unique visitors (by IP) - most within the past 6 months - and 9 separate content contributors, not to mention 150 feed subscribers. I have made a number of solid friendships and landed some excellent business deals. I can’t complain.

And now we’re at 1000. Who knows where this blog will go. But I know where we’ve been. Looking back at old content makes me shiver to wonder how I could write such junky entries, but you know what - anyone who blogs is a young blogger at one time or another and usually, the more bull-headed and stubborn a young blogger is, the more likely they will push through the rough terrain and come out shining on the other end. I’ve got a ways to go still, but I’m learning. Everyday I’m learning. And I hope I never stop learning.

Here’s some of the highlights from the first 1000 posts:

• A Tale of Three Bloggers, published February 27, 2006
• 5 Ways to Leverage Advance Posting, published January 18, 2006
• Admitted “Impeachable Offenses”, published December 21, 2005
• Textpattern to WordPress Import Script, published November 22, 2005
• WordPress Theme: Utica Avenue Released, published February 21, 2005
• Brett Favre Retirement Imminent, published February 2, 2005 - Outdated but as relevant today as when published, just different circumstances this year
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - The Dream Remains a Dream and MLK Day is not my Holiday, published on January 16, 2004 and 2005

There’s plenty more, but those highlight my last 1000 posts pretty accurately. Some politics, some social griping and a lot of technology, blogging and WordPress.

Thanks for making this job so much fun. Maybe by My official 2 year anniversary (May 20th), the next major hurdle will be on its way to being overcome (actually monetizing the blog successfully).

Finally, to the inspiring folks who knowingly or unkowingly push me to be better: Jeremy Zawodny (who is just so cool with his blogging about Yahoo and “stuff”), Darren Rowse (who is teaching me how to grow this blog through his strategies and b5media), Jeremy Wright (who is a long time friend, blogger and co-author of You Can Blog and of whom I can say, “I knew him when he was known as “studiococo”), Mark Jaiquith (who tirelessly works on WordPress development and somehow has time to maintain and support countless A-list political blogs), Vinnie Garcia (who can’t get a decent RSS feed to work but is killer on web standards and CSS), Jason Kottke (who I somehow can’t stand but still take inspiration on layout, design and creativity from), and countless others… Thank you!

Tagged as: Blogging, milestones, Technosailor