Tread lightly on the things of earth

I’m pleased to report the dubious achievement of now having more than two years of weblog entries here, all reachable via the Search field.

Two years doing any one thing represents follow-through for me on par with completing a marathon. Wow.

Best outcomes of blogging so far?

• I’m finding my voice and the courage to use it. The idea that one day voice, message, and skill might be called forth in unison to serve good ends motivates me.
• I’ve made new friends. Not having had to be alone during the last three years is a priceless gift. Life in an insane asylum (the world of U.S. conservative religiopolitics) is no stroll in paradise, however beautiful the inmates and surroundings. I get too serious about it and then forget to laugh. (Wouldn’t it be great to be remembered as someone who laughed a lot?) I’ve learned that friends help friends laugh.

David at Orcinus, a blogger I learn a lot from, wrote yesterday about The spurious rise of the non-anonymous blogger. All this interesting discussion for and against blogging anonymity postdates my “choice” of non-anonymity — my ass is hangin’ out there because two years ago it never occurred to me I could whip up a pseudonym.

Just as well: writing-as-myself exercises my internal editor so I’m a little fairer, more thoughtful, and more compassionate than I might be otherwise.

Hmmm. Maybe non-anonymous writing can also work for people like nutrition information does for foods: it gives clues whether you’d like the item and what it’s made of. I like knowing people through their writing — and letting them know me, which leads to more friends than I could actually meet in person — and then thinking that should we meet in person we’d soon feel right at home with each other based on this agreeable written history instead of having to waste time assessing whether one or the other of us is a jackass. :-)

My 2003 and ongoing 2004 weblog entries are all nicely tied together here in Movable Type with links every which way: entry to entry, month to month, day to day, category to category. (Try clicking an entry’s month name, for example.)

My 2002 entries were almost all published using a different system, Radio UserLand, and are accessible as published starting here.

But I’ve also imported these 2002 entries into Movable Type (using Bill Kearney’s Radio Exporter.root tool) so that all weblog content is searchable from within Movable Type. FWIW, the imported 2002 content starts here.