Fourth blogoversary

Today is the fourth anniversary of my blog—my blogoversary. I published my first post, “I live in a land downunder. No, the other one…” on September 13, 2006.

People have different reasons for starting blogging, and some of us have many different reasons. My blog grew out of emails I sent to friends and family back in the US. In addition to the usual updates about what we were up to, I also sometimes told them about things going on in the news and what life is like in New Zealand.

Sometime in 2005, Nigel urged me to start a blog. He could see that writing those emails was important to me, and he thought a blog would be a good way to have a writing outlet. I was intrigued, but didn’t act on it right then because I thought, wrongly, that it cost money to blog.

Time passed and we started organising our move back to Auckland, then settling in. The specific motivator for me to finally start a blog was that my friend Jason was about to come to visit us in New Zealand. He talked about emailing photos to friends and family and I suggested that he start a blog and post the photos there instead so his friends and family could check them out and read about his adventures. That became the specific motivator for me, too. Jason started his blog a little over a week before I did, but both of us have continued ever since.

My podcast started about six months later and I originally saw that as an extension of my blog. It evolved in its own direction over time, and another podcast split off from that—one I do with Jason, kind of bringing it all full circle.

This blog has always been a mixed bag, as shown in my tags (“Labels”). It’s about what interests me at the moment, like many blogs are. There’s a lot about New Zealand, the US and things having little or nothing to do with either.

I’ve written a lot about politics, which figures, since that’s what my degree is in. On this blog, and in my visits to those of others, I’ve been criticised by the left and the right (sometimes strongly). Some think that’s a sign of getting the balance right, but I don’t. Instead, it just means that sometimes I say things that stir up people further along toward one end or the other of the political spectrum than I am, and that’s fine. Personally, I respect reasoned passion, regardless of which end of the spectrum it’s at—but I can’t stand un-reasoned and irrational beliefs, no matter how passionately held and regardless of which end of the spectrum it’s coming from.

So, that’s basically the story of this blog, now four years old. As I said in that first post, “So pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.”