What year is it? 2010? Holy shit. I've been on this blog for four years.
In just over four years, I've written nearly 100 long essay-style posts, 111 posts in total including videos and early bullshit, and have drastically changed the layout/graphics of the site at least 5 times. It all started because I wanted a place to type.
I feel like I should explain something about this blog, first. It is narcissistic, but not because I want all eyes on me and my words and lookathowmuchIcantype. No. It is narcissistic because it purely serves me, my needs and whims. It is my brain dump and mindpressure valve. Sure, I could just keep all this in a secret text file on my flash drive. But then I wouldn't have the fear.
The fear is that someone might read these 100 post I've written up at late hours of the night in different years of my life. But that fear also forces me to put some quality control on these posts. I write better knowing that someone out there, likely someone I know, is watching. Make no mistake: everything posted here is a first draft. But I think these writing exercises have made my first drafts better.
Additionally, hearing from people in real life that they read this blog is both gratifying and terrifying.
Case in point: I wrote about some comedians I had seen, and one of them actually replied to it. That was both awesome and awful. I think my narcissism wants to be watched but not know it is watched. But this entry isn't about my neuroses - I should save that topic for later. It's about bloggin', and this blog, and retrospectiving on all that.
Sometimes I like to spend a few minutes looking back on four years of blogging too hard. It produces a lot of cringes. I do not look forward to seeing this post in 2012 and seeing that all my clever sentences weren't actually clever.
I have been as serious as deconstructing racial politics and as vapid as rambling on in a feverish haze. This blog has chronicled one of my first jobs to my most recent job search. It has hosted a plethora of album first impressions and a growing smidge of book impressions. It has recalled two very different car crashes.
It has chronicled events of my life. My formative trip to the archipelago of my parents, and the story that, in some part, came out of it. I have worked out my ideas of folk music and indie music. I started and ended college with this site.
It has been a soapbox on politics, television and religion. It has documented distant memories of school, travels and festivals. My issues, my arts. This blog has forgotten genocides, basketball dreams, tributes to the dead and professional wrestling. Deeper in: patriotic complexes, virtues of Christmas and a decade of music. And of course, there is always writing.
Shit is crazy to realize I willingly regurgitated all this, trying to adhere to a 3-a-month schedule, which I failed at spectacularly and frequently. (I have been pretty good about it these past 4 months though.)
Did you know I track some interesting statistics on this blog? My most popular entry that grabs stranger from google is my album impression of Cassadaga by Bright Eyes. That thing is always accidentally attracting a few people a week, usually people googling lyrics I happened to quote. Second to that is this ancient rant about the casual racism of TV personalities which continues to perplex me? Why does that consistently reel in the hits?
Most of the visitors spend less than 5 seconds here. Most are from the US, though I have registered hits from France, Australia, Denmark and more. Most of you use Chrome & Firefox, some Safari, and almost no Internet Explorer. Some people have also typed in some pretty creepy/weird/random keywords into google to get here.
This blog is named after a sad old song that, after all these years I still love, even with its flaws, for its bright spots and nostalgic feelings. To me, it is a song of skillful phrases, moving verses and a beautiful erupting crescendo. To you, "Something Vague" might be too quivering, too overwrought, not particularly clever and bleeding-heart. You might be right. It has, after all, been many years since it came out. But I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. If I'm the person I think I am, the person I want to be, I'll still be sentimental about that old MP3 and blogging under its name for years to come.