Welcome back to this funny little life. For those of you that have been along for the ride for a while, you most likely were there when I was blogging a lot. This was in those heady times as MySpace was on the way out and Facebook hadn’t completely subsumed all of our thoughts (Twitter, too, but I never really got into that). I was an active blogger who posted A LOT, and I made some friends in fellow bloggers, some of whom I got to meet later in life.
Ironically, one of the things that prompted me to want to start blogging was a trip to Chicago, which is now my home. Around the start of my 30s, for those keeping score, I will be 51 on May 17th, I had discovered working out and even had a personal trainer. I was, for the first time to my recollection, considered “hot” by tens (maybe twenties) of the MySpace cognoscenti, but on that trip to Chicago, I think it must have been either Pride or Market Days (I’m OLD now…sue me), the reaction I would get whenever I said I was from Indianapolis was one of general disdain and surprise that I wasn’t a slack-jawed yokel. That’s where “I May Be from Indiana, But I’m Not an Idiot,” my blog, was born. Of course, having lived in Chicago for over 6 years now, I get it. Especially how devolved much of Indiana (particularly Republicans) has become.
While I am still on Facebook, I no longer really engage in it other than posting when I am traveling for work, which is frequently. I check in from time to time, but it no longer subsumes my every waking thought. Blogging was a way for me be creative and get that out into the world. I would plan out what I would blog for the day, and it was really something I enjoyed. It was basically a recounting of what was going on in my life, mostly unvarnished, but of course, we ALL edit. When it became easier to just make several posts a day either of my thoughts or funny videos and memes I would put in the blog, the blog began to die. I don’t even really recall when I stuck a fork in it, but thankfully, it is lost to time (I hope).
As I am mostly OFF of Facebook nowadays, and unlike last trips, I did not want to do mass photo dumps onto that platform, I looked around at several different apps to help curate my travels and give some structure to photos I want to share (close family and friends will get the photo dump if they want), and while I will still post some things to Facebook, Instagram, and Threads…the Zuckerverse… I wanted, needed to do more, and seeing as I will be traveling a lot via train this trip, it made sense to do a journal of some sort. I tried several different options, and since they either required people to have an account with that service, free or otherwise, or just wasn’t as readily sharable as I wanted, I found myself looking back at my past.
Blogspot. Who even knew it still existed, and from everything I have seen of it, it is exactly as it was when I was using it 20 years ago. It’s frustratingly archaic, but for what I need it to do, it will do. Will I continue once this trip is over? We shall see. For those of you new to this, if you have read this far already, you shall understand I am verbose as hell and completely thorough in recounting my day. If that is not your thing, I understand. I will also try my best to catch all the typos and keep grammar close to where it should be, but again, these are long posts. Sometimes even I don’t want to proofread them again.
So, here we are. As I am flying past Toronto about an hour into my 7+ hour journey to London, I am writing my first blog post in decades. The Shadow of the Past*…indeed.
A peek inside. This is how I am writing this.
*Yes, gentle reader, that is a Tolkien reference. Again, for those of you that been along for the ride, this will come as zero surprise. There will be several references to Tolkien in my post titles. This is me.
Leave a Reply