7-year retrospective
I should have posted this last Thursday, on the date of my actual 7th blog birthday, but this is close enough! Here’s a retrospective of where I was…
Seven years ago: About to graduate from college w/ my BA in linguistics. Married, living in a pretty cool townhouse in Athens (bigger than my mom’s house in square footage!) with an approx. 2 ft. x 8 ft. “yard” out back, where I’d planted some shrubs and flowers and made the place look generally nicer than the exterior of most college students’ dwellings. Total Mac geek obsessed w/ old obscure hardware.
Six years ago: About to wrap up the intense, life-changing, really wonderful experience that was the MIT Program (which includes giving a presentation at UPS headquarters in Atlanta), and graduate w/ a degree that people don’t understand: “Yes, the degree is actually called MIT. No, it’s not an MS in IT. It’s a Master of Internet Technology. That’s a real, separate degree.” And speaking of life-changing experiences, living for four months w/ the secret that my husband is trans – and wondering what the hell I’m going to do, while trying to hold things together on the surface for the benefit of people in my everyday interactions (only Jenny and Niki knew at this point). Applying for a job at a technology non-profit in Dallas, Texas.
Five years ago: Newly transplanted to Atlanta after seven months in Texas. I would hesitate to say going there was a mistake, because I learned a lot and I don’t think I would be the same otherwise. (Insert cheesy platitude about every experience shaping who you are… blah blah.) Ultimately it was a positive, because I learned what I didn’t want, and it made the things I did want come into much sharper focus. Working at The Job (also known occasionally herein as PHS, and in a few scant places, by its real name). Still married legally but separated in most senses of the word, though she was staying w/ me after moving from Athens until she found her own apartment in May. A therapist I was seeing at the time gave me crap about us sharing the same bed and “how that looks,” and I promptly fired her (the therapist). Blog archives for April 2004 are lost to the ether due to a hard drive failure. :P
Four years ago: Been in Atlanta and working at The Job for a little over a year. Hanging out w/ Brent, Ryan, and Sam at Houlihan’s several nights a week after work, then walking home in the almost-dusk light. Recently met some local bloggers IRL; I’m starting to make connections in this town. Officially divorced now, for seven months. This place feels like home (and I selfishly wish Jenny and Niki would move here). Reconnected w/ Dacia and Dipika thanks to blogging. Occasionally fucking a not-so-closeted Republican, but getting increasingly fed up w/ the situation; got my eye on a local political blogger who, by casual appearances, you might not think is my “type.” Trying to hatch a plan to get in his pants.
Three years ago: Rusty and I have been an item for almost a year (the plan worked!). Moved out of my first Atlanta apartment a month prior, even though I didn’t really want to; but they wouldn’t budge on raising the rent, and anyway, it had been taken over by a new, shitty management company. Moved to the Ice House Lofts, into an apartment at the other end of the hall from Rusty. :) We call it our halfway house to living together. Working at Large Media Organization, after departing The Job in October ‘05. My dad had a stroke a month earlier and things are kind of rough in that area. Official launch of Georgia Podcast Network is imminent.
Two years ago: Surprise – back at The Job! This time as a contractor, and it’s all for the best. Coming back was one of the best “career-related” decisions I’ve made, and I told my boss this time I’m never leaving. Total site redesign and launch of new platform complete, and I raked up major overtime bucks with which I dug myself slightly out of debt (finally paid off that car I bought seven years earlier!). Rusty and I have moved in together in an ill-fated apartment. PodCamp Atlanta has come and gone and I’m exhausted and swear I’ll never organize another conference – and yet, I dream up the idea of Sex 2.0 and decide to try to make it really happen. In honor of my 5th blog birthday I’ve moved my blog off my homegrown PHP/MySQL system and onto WordPress. Due to peer pressure and the inevitability of “anything I hate on, I will be a fanatic about in 6 months to a year,” I’ve started using Twitter. I graduate from level 3 pole dancing and get my purple garter.
One year ago: Sex 2.0 really happened OMFG!! And it was a huge success w/ a full week of post-orgasmic bliss! But this time, I’m standing firm on my promise to myself to never organize another conference. What else? Back to being a permanent full-time employee at The Job. Performed in the second PoleLaTeaz student showcase. Rusty and I are living together back in Decatur and have recently brought Puff and Stuff to live with us. We meet with a super cool financial planner and lay out a plan for getting out of debt, saving money, and eventually buying a house together.
There’s more – much more. There’s no way I can accurately condense seven years into a “highlight reel” of a post. But, I felt like I should put something up, just to reflect on how things change over the course of [x] number of years, and how keeping a record of your life – whether a blog, a personal journal, or any other medium – is, I believe, extremely valuable.
Maybe later I’ll go back and edit this post w/ hyperlinks to relevant posts about key events!
Update: Post has been updated w/ a million links!
7 years… and radio silence?
Friday is my 7th blog birthday (or “blogiversary” if you prefer), and I have no idea what to say. I haven’t done any substantive blogging since late February. I have so much inside of me that I want to get out, but I don’t follow through w/ writing a post; it doesn’t feel right. I go thru these phases from time to time but this one feels different. I can’t even put it into words. Or maybe I just don’t have the energy to try. And that’s part of it, in general.
I’m hoping my “blog itch” will come back soon. It always does. I’ve been a writer all my life. Maybe one night I’ll start writing and just pore it all out here. Who knows. But I’ve had to detach myself from a lot of the “communities” I previously associated with on the internet. I’m hoping this is just another instance of me, introvert, recharging the way I need to: by reconnecting w/ myself.
I’m tired of explaining the concept of privilege. I’m tired of having the same damn conversations over and over again. I’m tired of defending my right to speak about my own life. I’m tired of people running their mouths about shit they know nothing about. I’m tired of being reminded of what the REAL IMPORTANT POLITICAL issues are, thank you very much ma’am. I’m tired of monetization and thought leadership and personal brands and identity management. I’m tired of knowing all too well that the people I trust live very far away.
And, yes, out here in meatspace, I’m busy. That’s the truth. But to pretend that’s the full explanation for relative blog silence would be a lie.
I love our house. I love Rusty. I love that we’re taking a road trip to Fitzgerald, Ga. this weekend to see wild chickens. I love that the chickens were released into the nearby woods in the 1960s to be game birds, but instead they all came into downtown Fitzgerald and have been there ever since.
I also love tags. Here’s a tagged retrospective of blog birthdays past. I didn’t observe the first birthday because I was too busy throwing up, and the second one, unfortunately, is lost to the ether due to a hard drive failure. (Along with it, so are my blog chronicles of landing The Job in Atlanta, moving away from Dallas, etc.)
Now we’re all six
Today my blog turns six. (It’s also the one-year anniversary of me moving to WordPress. Oh, and I’m celebrating by being at work and being sick.) Hard to believe all that’s happened in that timespan! I’ve graduated from college, started and graduated from grad school, gotten the biggest shock of my life, moved to Texas, gotten divorced, moved to Atlanta, worked at… let’s see… at least five different jobs, met some great new friends, reconnected with some old friends, and most importantly, met the GDBF (and our three-year anniversary is coming up in a few weeks!).
What will be the next chapter in my life with a blog?
Blog birthday party post-mortem
As you can see, last night’s blog birthday party was a rollicking good time. Special thanks to Sara for making these awesome, blog-specific cupcakes (with really tasty icing, I might add). I can’t remember if I ate 3 or 4 of them; I lost count.
Amid the revelry last night, two podcasts were recorded. One consisted of Sherry and I kind of interviewing each other about blogging, social media, and all that good stuff. The other involved passing the recorder around to everyone at the table, and having each person talk about their blog, why they started it, blogging in general, and whatever else they wanted to say with a digital recorder in their face. Look for both of those soon on Mostly ITP.
Thanks to everyone who came out last night for the festivities! What more could a blogger ask for?
Update: It just makes sense to include a roll call of everyone who came last night, since almost everyone there was a blogger.
Blogs in attendance:
- Alenda Lux
- Blog for Democracy
- The Daily Bacon
- Drama Wench
- Drifting Through the Grift
- An Entrepreneur’s Journey
- Going Through the Motions
- GrabbingSand
- Gratuitous Dumbassitude
- Monotonous
- Peachtree Screed
- Radical Georgia Moderate
- Sodomy Creek
- Spacey Gracey Review
Moving in, getting settled
Today’s the day, folks… this five-year anniversary of this blog’s inception. According to About.com, traditional gift ideas for a fifth anniversary include airline tickets or a cruise. I’m just saying.
When I started this blog on April 17, 2002, I was 22 years old, married, living in Athens, and about to finish my undergraduate degree. I was using a 350mhz Sawtooth G4 tower, which was a really nice computer and which I still miss sometimes. There was no such thing as podcasting. There were very few blogging tools available, and the ones that were available were pretty clunky, so a homegrown system was obviously the way to go. Plus it gave me an opportunity to practice (and improve, over the years) my PHP skills.
But now, five years later, in commemoration of this milestone, guess what I’m doing? I’m moving to WordPress. I never thought the day would come! And I bet you didn’t either, readers. I have to say, when I was messing with WordPress last week, getting the new site ready, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the WordPress back-end code looks a lot like my code. Only difference is WordPress has more of it consolidated into functions (which makes sense).
I’m switching to WordPress not because it’s the hip thing to do, but because I was happy to continue using my homegrown system until I began to feel limited by it. And, in the past few months, that’s what has happened. There are capabilities I’d like to have – for example, tagging – that I don’t have with my system. Sure, I could write that stuff into my system, but why reinvent the wheel? I don’t have time, and I’m past the point of trying to “prove” my PHP/MySQL programming capabilities to myself.
So, without further ado – the new site is (drumroll) beingamberrhea.com. Please update your links!
You can grab the new RSS feed at http://www.beingamberrhea.com/feed. Alternately, if you don’t want to get my daily del.icio.us and Twitter updates, you can subscribe to http://www.beingamberrhea.com/category/blog/feed for actual blog posts only.
The old site will remain for posterity and reference, but after a few days I will disable comments.
I look forward to seeing y’all around here!
After five years, it’s time to move on
Today’s the day, folks… this five-year anniversary of this blog’s inception. According to About.com, traditional gift ideas for a fifth anniversary include airline tickets or a cruise. I’m just saying.
When I started this blog on April 17, 2002, I was 22 years old, married, living in Athens, and about to finish my undergraduate degree. I was using a 350mhz Sawtooth G4 tower, which was a really nice computer and which I still miss sometimes. There was no such thing as podcasting. There were very few blogging tools available, and the ones that were available were pretty clunky, so a homegrown system was obviously the way to go. Plus it gave me an opportunity to practice (and improve, over the years) my PHP skills.
But now, five years later, in commemoration of this milestone, guess what I’m doing? I’m moving to WordPress. I never thought the day would come! And I bet you didn’t either, readers. I have to say, when I was messing with WordPress last week, getting the new site ready, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the WordPress back-end code looks a lot like my code. Only difference is WordPress has more of it consolidated into functions (which makes sense).
I’m switching to WordPress not because it’s the hip thing to do, but because I was happy to continue using my homegrown system until I began to feel limited by it. And, in the past few months, that’s what has happened. There are capabilities I’d like to have – for example, tagging – that I don’t have with my system. Sure, I could write that stuff into my system, but why reinvent the wheel? I don’t have time, and I’m past the point of trying to “prove” my PHP/MySQL programming capabilities to myself.
So, without further ado – the new site is (drumroll) beingamberrhea.com. Please update your links!
You can grab the new RSS feed at http://www.beingamberrhea.com/feed. Alternately, if you don’t want to get my daily del.icio.us and Twitter updates, you can subscribe to http://www.beingamberrhea.com/category/blog/feed for actual blog posts only.
This site will remain for posterity and reference, but after a few days I will disable comments.
See y’all at the new place…!
Celebrating blogging
Yes, I sent out an evite for a birthday party for my blog. Yes, I’m a nerd of ever-increasing degrees.
There will be cupcakes. A good time will be had by all.
Also, next Tuesday (the milestone day!), there will be some changes ’round these parts. Stay tuned.
Four is a fun age
And just like that, it’s my blog’s 4th birthday. I haven’t been able to think of anything to do to celebrate, aside from putting “Four more years!” as my subtitle, so there you go. Tonight I’ll probably go to Publix and get myself one of their yellow cakes with chocolate icing and a cherry on top. Yes, a whole cake. A slice wouldn’t do, because I almost always get one whenever I go to Publix anyway, to reward myself for going grocery shopping.
I don’t know what to write, either. So I guess this kind of sucks as a “momentous blogging anniversary” post. On his blog’s 3rd birthday (I waffle between using “birthday” and “anniversary;” both work), Patrick wrote a post about what he’d learned in three years of blogging. I feel like I should do someting similar, but I don’t know what to say. Maybe that means I haven’t learned anything.
Actually, I’ve learned plenty; I just don’t know how to describe it without boring everyone, and I really don’t have much time right now anyway. Oh! I know what, I’ll quote from my ill-fated essay submission for She Is Such A Geek.
I’ve been blogging foralmostfour years now, and at this point I’ve embraced it as a significant part of who I am. I feel confident enough now to say, “fuck that noise” to anyone who would scoff at it. There are still plenty of people out there who view blogging as an isolating activity, one that hinders the ability to form healthy relationships in real life. But I’ve found the polar opposite to be true.Immersing myself in the world of blogging has exposed me to ideas and experiences I never would’ve had otherwise, and has helped me grow as a writer and a person. Blogging encourages introspection, and as such, has led me to think more carefully about what I believe and why. It has forced me to examine the reasons behind my actions and thoughts. It has helped me to strengthen my viewpoints and gain the confidence to explain and defend them with intelligence and grace. I believe this process to be constructive for others, as well – whether readers relate to or disagree with what’s written, the dialogue is half the point. Blogs make it possible for all us Average Janes to tell our personal stories and connect those experiences to issues on a larger scale.
And let’s not forget, without this blog I never would’ve met Rusty, or the trivia crew, or gotten back in touch with Dipika and Dacia, or co-founded the Georgia Podcast Network, or… the list goes on and on!
Obligatory observation of change: When I started this blog, I was a senior in college and married. A lot can change in four years!
Commence confetti, balloons, and a stripper popping out of a cake.
Update: Pictures! Hell yes, I got my cake. (Unfortunately I didn’t think to buy candles to put on it; oh well.) And just as I described earlier, it had a cherry on top, in true Publix bakery fashion.
Monday…
…will be my blog’s 4th birthday. Finally it’s wearing big girl pants. How should I (we!) celebrate?
Birthday Present
In recognition of my blog’s third birthday, Chris was nice enough to dump the data from the old database onto my Dreamhost space, and I put up a front end to view it here. You can’t leave comments or anything; it’s for historic purposes only. Apparently I was wrong in remembering the exact date of my blog’s birth; it was April 17th, not April 22nd. I’ve been reading the entries from summer of 2002 and they’re tearing me up inside.