Time flies when you're having fun

It's now been exactly 8 years since I decided to start blogging. I am amazed I'm still at it. Most of the people whose blogs inspired me to get started vanished from the blogosphere some time ago. Oh, some of them still have active sites but their postings are rather sporadic. Some migrated to other social media -- Twitter, Faceback, Instagram -- and others left because life interfered. I'm not sure why I'm still plugging away. One of my original motivations was being stuck in a job where I wound up with way too much time to kill while collecting a paycheck. That same job also provided plenty of grist for the proverbial mill in the form of neurotic co-workers and bureaucratic insanity. Life is a lot quieter now than it was when we lived in Atlanta. So why am I still blogging? No clue -- but I guess it does beat doing housework.

Happy blogiversary to me

On Monday it'll be two years exactly since I started playing with this blog. I started off intending to be studiously apolitical and never, ever mention where I worked.  The focus was going to be strictly fun stuff -- national parks, mutated muffler men, weird roadside art, maybe an occasional book review.

Well, that didn't last long.  Politics in 2008 were just too interesting to ignore, and enough bizarre stuff happens at work that posts on Adventures in Bureaucracy were inevitable.  I do have a strong enough sense of self-preservation that I try to remember to refer to my employer as Large Namless Agency, at least when I'm writing about my personal experiences or impressions as one cog in a giant machine.

Over the past several years I've watched other blogs come and go.  Some have gotten better, some worse, some of the bloggers I used to read on a regular basis got burnt out, and some decided to switch to different venues.  It's like anything else -- once the new wears off, it can be hard to sustain an interest.  I've gone through the usual mental gymnastics, too, the whole "who am I writing this for?  Me? Friends and family? Or strangers who may or may not like what I've got to say?"  One of the dangers inherent in blogging is it's easy to find yourself playing to (for?) an audience you may not have wanted.  Approbation is nice, so it's tempting to start saying stuff you'll hope will garner a positive comment or two.  Or a hundred.  Everyone wants to have his or her existence acknowledged; bloggers are no exception.