Four Years

My latest return to blogging is producing mixed emotions. On the positive side, I'm looking forward to re-connecting with those special blogger friends of yore. And it's a great pleasure to bring the writing chops out of the dust-bin and give them another go.

As for the negative, it's very sad to see the absence of the old community spirit that existed back in the pioneering days of '02. Elaine's post the other day really brought it home to me. She takes us back to her August posts of that year.

We had so much cross-blogging going on then. It was such a blast.

Time moves on. As Elaine says, in response to my comment, "everyone -- including me, I guess -- is just into his/her own thing. It's really not a community anymore. Too big. Too institutionalized."

So things are different. Well, duh, what did I expect? What the hell isn't different after four years? Am I going to be just another crotchety old dude bitching about how "it ain't what it usta be?"

I can get on board with the new reality or I can decide that coming back to the blogosphere wasn't worth it and drop out. I wouldn't be the first.

I'm going to start experimenting with a new feature--Anniversary Archives (see next post). This particular post is an uncomfortable but eye-opening example of how much things can change in four years.