Has it been a year already?

In fact, it has. On this day (not this date) last year, this blog was launched. Okay, well, I guess technically it was re-launched, but can you really consider 4 posts in 2 years from the first go-round an actual launch?

Well, regardless of whether this is in fact a launch or a re-launch, the simple fact is that this time has been much more successful than the last, whatever it was. This is post 241, meaning that I posted 240 times in the last year. This represents roughly a 12000 percent increase in my blogging productivity over the prior 2 years.

It occurred to me that it had been a year over the weekend, because it was Homecoming Weekend at Messiah, and I starting posting again after last year's Homecoming, and my 5 year reunion. Oddly enough, this year's Homecoming was the first since my freshman year in 1998 that I did not set foot on the Messiah campus. Not even for the soccer game! I'll give some of you a moment to recover from that particular shock, and then I'll tell you that I have, in fact, not been to a Messiah soccer game yet this year. Are you back up off the floor yet? It's not intentional, it's just worked out that way. I expect that will change before the season ends. Really, my attendance has been gradually slipping since I moved to this house and went from being roughly 5 minutes away from campus, to more like 20. It's more of an effort to go, and since my level of personal connection to the team has been naturally slipping the further I get from my college days, it's just the way things progress.

Anyhow, at the one year anniversary of the blog, I've been reflecting a bit. Shaking the cobwebs off the blog was part of an overall plan to make more productive use of my time. At the centerpiece of that plan was a dramatic cutback in the amount of TV I was watching, with a commitment not to turn the TV on until at least 8 pm on weeknights. The extra time was to be spent reading, blogging, and doing other more productive things. I've tried cutting back on TV before and failed miserably, but a year later, I'm still feeling pretty good. Other than the implied exceptions for things like the NCAA basketball tournament, the Olympics, and Phillies playoff games, I've kept that commitment very well. It seems somewhat ironic that I'm writing about this days after I finally gave in and bought an HDTV (The Phillies are in the World Series, that doesn't happen every day.), but at the same time, it felt good being able to make that purchase knowing I wouldn't be going back to allowing TV to completely dominate my time.

As you've probably noticed, there has been a recent drop-off in my blogging frequency, and my reading is down too. There's a number of factors at play there - a stretch of rather irregular schedules, my initial "honeymoon" period with the Wii, the Phillies playoff run, and a spell of apathy being chief among them. However, I've got a new book pulled out and ready to go, my schedule should return to normal shortly after the World Series, and I anticipate things getting closer to the old norm in the weeks to come.

My continued gratitude to those of you who think it worth your time to come by and read what I have to say on a regular basis! I look forward to what will happen in the next year.