The Year of the Blog

This month marks one year that I've been actively reading and subscribing to blogs. I owe my indoctrination into the blogosphere to NeoWin, a UK-based site focusing on, but not limited to Windows and PC news. Prior to that, I had only read and participated in various technology forums for the purpose of researching solutions to specific problem. But NeoWin wasn't a forum like I was used to. I experienced a website that was updated almost hourly with fresh news and people were busily "talking amongst themselves" about the topics posted. I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. Soon I discovered that many of the people posting comments had blogs of their own and that's when the "World of Blog" was opened up to me.

It didn't take long for me to stray from reading pure-tech blogs to reading blogs of real individuals around the world who actually had lives away from work. The ones I gravitated toward were honestly, passionately and authentically writing about things that interested me; Christianity, technology, family, music.... home improvements! I would read about their latest trials, victories and updates on family members. They posted pictures from vacation, birthday parties, holiday gatherings - I felt like I was starting to know these people and when I would comment on their site, most times they would email me back directly. Not since having a pen-pal as a child was I having so much fun connecting with people in parts unknown!

Then I decided to see who was blogging close to me that shared my passions. Fellowship Church in Grapevine had a couple of church tech bloggers, Brian Bailey and Terry Storch. For years I had meant to connect with Terry back when he was the Technology Pastor to share ideas about church technology, but never did. It was his blog that finally got us face to face back in January of this year and it was his blog that showed me who Terry Storch really was beyond the write-up of the Staff page on the Fellowship Church website.

Now, a year later, I've connected with so many people through blogs far beyond the folks listed in the sidebar of this site and am looking forward, Lord willing, to actually meeting some of you in the year to come. I think it was Brian Bailey who said that 2005 would be the year where more people than ever would shift from reading blogs to writing them. In my case, that prophecy was dead-on.