Nobody has ever really questioned why I began blogging and I can't blame them but if you read this blog and haven't dug deep in to the archives, I'll get you up to speed.
Mere months after moving to the Twin Cities on a cold December evening I began this blog, entitled "A Day in the Life". It had virtually no direction in the beginning and many would say that it still doesn't but it became a launching pad in future years for my more recent projects and my further involvement in social media as a whole.
After working in a job surrounded by journalists, and often times reading their stories before publication. I realized that I could probably do this. After all, I'm a creative type and blogging in any format seemed like a logical extension of my graphic and web design work and my hobby of photography. And it continued. For probably far too long I was posting 4-5 days each week and the content was dry. In short, it sucked. I went through a period where I was displeased with the political happenings in our country and with the outlet I had developed the content was very political.
Then one day I decided that being so focused on one topic wasn't what I was about. I think it was around 2006 (almost three years in to blogging) when I took a drastic turn and that's when people started really reading what I was writing. MNSpeak (when Max Sparber was running it) began occasionally linking to my posts and that simply spurred my blogging. I began looking at the weird shit happening in Minnesota and opened my eyes to how truly weird things I saw every day were - I still remember spotting a possible trend of pipe smoking coming back.
As I explored my own photography and that of others in Minnesota I began putting together MinnPics to showcase the work of those Minnesotans sharing their photos on Flickr. Much to my surprise it actually took off. I dabbled there with how frequently to update and what to showcase and have settled in to a bit of a random groove with it after over two years. I juggled this blog and MinnPics and somehow kept both going while also handling all of my other daily duties as a somewhat responsible citizen. During that time, I decided to begin moving away from happenings in Minnesota with this blog and began sprinkling in more pop culture type of stuff including what could be called Nipplegate and Camel Toe watch during the 2008 summer olympics and the big rumor of last year: whether or not Lady Gaga was transgendered. (She's obviously not)
This year, I slowed down the posting here and this summer I started Minnesota Valley Photos. It's my own photos I take in and around the Minnesota River Valley and with an archive of over 15,000 photos I should be able to keep something coming for a few more months. Or years.
Being a huge music fan, I also started up a quickly thrown together collection of videos I called The Video Playlist. It's another side project that may or may not have legs but like many of the projects at work, the mantra is "fail fast". Maybe I'll shit-can it or maybe it will silently live on in obscurity forever.
At some point I also started Strib comments because the absurdity of the Star Tribune's comments is downright amazing and finding the dumbest is always a good time! I rarely update it but it's a cool concept.
For now I'm cool with how things are but if anyone's interested in taking MinnPics to the next level, I'm all ears. ALL ears. More amazing than anything is the fact that I've stuck with something for almost seven years. Especially in a world where Twitter seems to have almost killed long form blogging like this because, let's be honest, I could have probably summed this up in 140 characters but it wouldn't have put you to sleep, would it?
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