I’m not really sure how to celebrate a blogiversary. It’s a little like emailing the office that it’s your birthday – something I’m sure Emily Post finds a little tacky. There’s also no cake unless you make it yourself. I’m really better with traditional celebrations, and much better if the party is for someone else. Ultimately, that may be the whole point of the blogiversary, patting yourself on the back for keeping up with it, and thanking all the guests who stumbled in to eat ice cream.

I started this blog to make myself write something every single day for a real audience. My little black notebook just wasn’t making much headway, and since I loathe sending my writing out for publication (lists, envelopes, records, bleh) it looked like instant publication was infinitely more relaxing.

Now, there’s publishing and there’s Publishing – Capital P Publishing is becoming a tad old school, what with all the academic fiery hoops and Gate Keepers and the year or so lag time while editors are busy filling up their own envelopes and their own record-keeping system for what they’ve sent out and what’s not made it back. It’s a lot like those dressing-room mirrors at Dillard’s – if you stand in just the right place you can see yourself posing at yourself, a thousand times over. And they all make you feel fat.

My lower-case ‘p’ publishing on this blog has been a lot more fun. I scribble out a little something, hit the ‘post’ button, and there it is – Out There. The blog world is completely democratic and wholly Ben Franklinesque. We are all of us self-made. The blogging process occasionally spits in the eye of academia, and I find that entertaining as well.

Examples? Well, how about Stuff White People Like. That guy is traveling all over working the book circuit now after his bulls-eye hit. Nothing like a book deal six months after goofing around on a free blog. And how about Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds? She’s got between 20,000 and 30,000 visitors a month. She’s also working on her MFA so she can be a writer – HA! I suspect that gal will be staring down the barrel of much more than a few pubs in obscure literary magazines. And soon.

Bless their gifted hearts. I love stories where talent and technology win.

So I thank the handful of you who check this thing every once in a while. It’s been a blast writing for you and a even more fun to find a new comment or two. I love ‘meeting’ everyone on here and it’s always like Christmas when I check the blogs for your latest scribbling. It’s the equivalent of those afternoon backyard get-togethers my mother and her friends used to have in the sixties. We trade stories, wipe jelly off of the kids, play a hand of bridge, and we’re all still home for dinner. Just the thought of it makes me want to wear clam-diggers and tease my hair.

Let’s keep doing this. It’s free, it’s fun, and we all seem to live in the same neighborhood.