According to my blog host’s administration page (on typepad.com), this is my 1000th blog post.
So it’s a kind of a little anniversary – of a serial, enumerative sort. I started this blog in August of 2004, when I was still working for ARAMARK corporation in Burbank (which I used to call, pseudonymously, Paradise Corporation, to avoid offending anyone, but I don’t think I need to worry about that much, anymore).
Actually, this blog has worked out almost exactly the way I intended and hoped.
It got a slow start – I missed many months at a time, more than once, and even a whole year (in the 2005-2006 range). But once I came to Korea, in September, 2007, I began posting quite regularly, and starting last year, I began a commitment to post at least once a day, which I’ve kept, although a few times I’ve had to “cheat” and do a “back-post” from a later time.
Once I accepted that I might do “back-posts,” I began to consider the possibility that I could “back-post” my entire life – I have huge quantities of journal-type writing that I contemplate eventually adding here – but to date, I’ve only made exactly 2 “historical” posts, both for my birth year of 1965.
I had envisioned this blog as means to achieve three primary goals:
1) I wanted a means to overcome my perpetual writer’s block
2) I wanted a way to more easily communicate with my far-flung family and friends, since I’ve always been so negligent in writing letters or email
3) I felt that my expressing myself in so public a forum, I could in essence use the blog as a tool to look at myself more realistically, with a lesser degree of self-deceptiveness – it’s hard to continue deceiving yourself when you’ve decided to live “live” in front of others
I have achieved all of these goals far beyond my original expectations. I know that this blog is often banal, frequently self-indulgent, mostly chaotic. But for all that, it’s serving its purposes excellently. I had no interest in making something that would get lots of “hits” or become popular – I’m writing this, first and foremost, for myself, with the added benefit that those who are interested can “watch me,” too.
If I study who’s looking at this blog (using the administrative tools provided by typepad or by feedjit), I know that I rarely get more than one or two page views per day from “strangers” – but I’ve discovered that, for example, that the single most common way that strangers “discover” my blog is by googling: “뭥미 meaning english”.
To me, this is funny, but it also points up a 4th possible goal, to add to the above 3: I can use this blog provide some unique or useful information to random people in the world – in the case mentioned, I seem to be the major online resource for people who are trying to figure out what the Korean slang term “뭥미” means in English (it seems to mean “what the…!”, normally said in a kind of tone of disgust or annoyance). I feel so proud.
Now that I’ve got the blog consistently (mostly) cross-posting to facebook, that’s added some to its functionality. To those who find it annoying to have to come “outside” of facebook to “visit” me, I apologize – but I have too many friends or family who are not interested in adopting facebook, and so I need to stay outside of that convenient but tightly-walled garden.
If I follow my intention, I think the “next 1000” will come more quickly, as I genuinely intend to pursue my plan to “back-post” at least some of my pre-blog writing – I’ve even brought along some major chunks of it (electronically and in the form of paper journals) to Korea, with this plan in mind.
Anyway, to my few but beloved readers – friends and family – thank you. Thank you for tolerating this rather droll effort to stay in touch. Thank you for being my friends, too! I have been so very lucky in my life, to have the kinds of friends and family that I have. Take care…
~jared
