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On July 16, 2004 I wrote the first "Pithless Thoughts" blog post. "Blogging" was the hot new thing back then. (Well, not "new-new", but new to me... in 3-4 years I might start "tweeting", who knows). I went back and read the first post tonight. It seems to have weathered eight years of blogging and reading blogs.
"...we go for the anonymous screen dump
of our "self" and hope someone out there really cares what we think
about artichoke dip, the Middle East, J-Lo, our "personal journey", or
even more mundanely, how our day went.
So, I join the blog. I guess it goes like this: I'll post a thought then check
anxiously to see if anyone acknowledges my digital presence. How
many times a day I check is inversely proportional to either my
narcissism or loneliness, yes?
Fishing for existence. Facelessly shedding anonymity. Baring what
little soul I have, hoping that with the addition of another bit of
someone else's fragile soul I, we, might become slightly more of a human
being. Even if its only zeros and ones and pixels in a darkened room,
it has meaning because it came from flesh, dirty fingernails, (or
maybe manicured), tapping out the sum of an existence. Who is capable
of grasping, much less embracing, even a paragraph of another human
being?
I'll think about that while I'm fixing dinner."
Eight years, a few high and low spots, 873 posts and over half a million page views later I'm still hanging on. A big part of why I hang on is the comment box. It is indeed a slight embrace of my existence, a grasping at a shared experience and an affirmation that there is a "we" to the world even if "we've" never met.
Thank you to all my friends and readers who have checked in, read and sometimes commented for these eight years. You've all made my life a bit richer and funner.
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15 comments:
Thanks for keeping it going, Steve! (: Congratulations on eight great years!! I've had a lot of fun reading.
I have enjoyed our occasional conversations very much. I look forward to many more.
Happy blogiversary!
Thank you for hanging in there. I don't tell you enough how instrumental you were in our eventual conversion to Orthodoxy.
Happy blog cake day, S-P. God grant it--and you--many years!
"You've all made my life a bit richer and funner."
As you have made ours!
Steve: You are prodigious! Keep up the good work! ... all the rest of it, too. I've always believed God has a sense of humor (or we wouldn't be here, huh?), where else does it come from? The other guy? Nah... he's one who SURE doesn't have a sense of humor. So keep 'em coming!
glad you are here! :)
Steve,
You play a vital role, even though it's not an exciting nail-bitter every day. You give the Orthodox world a sense of humor and a human face. Without rare people like you, how would we know Black Robes think about anything besides the psalter? And the canons of course.
Thank you so much for your web presence. You are in my prayers daily.
Are you kidding? You betcha there's a "we".
I'll say one thing - you did something very few people in history have ever gotten me to do actually change my mind on capital punishment...
I wish we could know each other in real life. Ain't gonna happen. Maybe "When the roll is called up yonder..." (Doh! Gave away my Baptist origins, I guess)
Now I'll go prove to a robot that I'm not a robot...
Happy birthday, Steve's blog! Steve, I've listened to all of your Our Life in Christ podcasts and loved every single one. I wish there were more! I'll be listening to Steve the Builder soon, God willing. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience, and--most instructive to me--your example of humility (which was particularly striking to me when people called into Our Life in Christ and were rather aggressive (if not downright rude), but you always managed to treat them with respect and kindness).
Reminds me of a passage in Scripture... ;-)
Have you ever read the book "Swimmy"? It's a children's book, but like many children's books, it makes a great point about even grown-up life. In the book, the little fish gather enough courage to swim in the big ocean by all swimming together. They arrange themselves in the shape of a really big fish, and then they swim. Don't you think blogging is a little like this? We feel better because we can see the other little fish swimming around us, so we know we're not alone out here with the sharks!
I have recently had a discussion with my husband's Godson about whether funner is actually a word. He conceded when I told him I had a teacher tell the whole class it is, indeed, a word, though it is the lesser prefered usage. :)
Keep blogging, Steve. Keep blogging cause you're awesome like that.
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