Five Years Later: What's really changed?

What you see in the background of that image there is what I refer to as "my journal." I bought it at a Borders or some other bookstore back in 2004, primarily for class when I was back finally finishing college. When I bought that hardcover item, I imagined that I would fill it out quickly and rush to replace it—repeatedly.

And nearly seven full years later, despite the binding falling apart and giving the appearance that it's been opened with far greater frequency, I'd say I'm a little more than halfway through it. Journaling every single day, as it turns out, is a routine I just never could get into.

Of course, the excuse that I make for not writing my private thoughts down on a more regular basis is because over time, I've developed a number of other places to publicly record them. My Tumblr has occasionally become one such venue for me in the past couple of years, but this particular blog has been another for five years now, today.

While I've made a note of this anniversary on one previous occasion, I don't think the past three years on BMC have really allowed me to post another "greatest hits" sort of series of links. Still, I do think it's appropriate to kind of look back, briefly reflect on what's happened and then get back to moving forward.


I think what strikes me most about that post I did when this blog turned two years old (other than BMC being under the title of "Soapbox Central" and me actually thinking my MySpace blog would continue getting posted to) is just the date and what followed pretty much right after that post when I closed with this thought:

"If the next two years is half as interesting as the past two, we're in for another pretty fucking good ride."

Well, make that three years that certainly lived up to the "interesting" part, I suppose—not that you'd know any of that from looking at what's in the archives here. I was very muted about what was occurring in my life personally, and so offering up multiple posts utilizing that "predictions" tag offered me a way to stay active here while writing about something anything other than myself.

It wasn't until a couple months ago that I finally felt compelled to share why. As mentioned in that long post that's arguably the most honest, heartfelt post I've ever written here, my world got turned upside-down in February 2008—shortly after that two-year anniversary post went up.

It's been an at-times brutal series of hills to climb and hoops to jump through as I deal with the consequences of my actions, and so my decision not to write about these things more frequently here has much to do with realizing that I have no one other to blame for the struggles of the past three years other than myself. I made my bed and have thus been forced to sleep in it.

But today, five years after I first started posting to this blog without much of an idea of what I intended to really do here, I know that the sometimes humiliating, oftentimes humbling experiences of the past three years are going to soon be behind me. It doesn't mean life will suddenly become that much easier or that I won't have to continue to occasionally deal with some of the very same problems, but I'm hoping I won't have to be as hesitant to share them.

Oh sure, I'll probably continue doing most of the predictions I've made pretty much the focal point of this blog, but I'm hoping that as life starts to change for me, what comprises a majority of the content here will too.

Looking back on the past three years though, I finally reverted back to the original title I had created this blog under and intend to never change it again. There was obviously a steep drop in activity here the year after I first posted here, and the gradual annual increase finally peaked last year when I posted here more times than any other year. It was actually an unspoken goal of mine.

My first year's posts were very heavily made up of just links with short, simple one-sentence thoughts. I suppose I could have gone back and deleted a number of them, especially those no longer active ones, but instead I wanted to try to have a year that had a higher total with more actual material that was my own. No, there was no real point to this, and no, I never mentioned anything on here about making that a "goal," but it was nice to finally have a good variety of "regular" features with the occasional surprises.

I think that looking forward, predictions for the four major sports as well as the Oscars are kind of given. Additionally, I like doing the quarterly posts on the Four Bs for no other reason than just constructing the graphics that I think can help tell the story of a season and will probably be fun to look back on as the years continue to pass. Eventually, I'd also like to add more episodes to my "FLY ON THE WALL" series about the Blackhawks.

But like I said, if I can't finish filling out that journal (which really should be a goal), I at least hope to offer more thoughts on those randomly memorable days (like, say, the encounter with the militant non-smoker) or occasionally rant about something trivial that's bothering me (like, say, shitty shoes).

And then, of course, there's ™, who has already given me a reason to be optimistic about the future when I would probably otherwise be specializing in the doom-and-gloom outlook. I was working as what I called a "waffle waiter" when I first started this blog, and while I'm admittedly frustrated that five years later—even with college degree now in hand—I'm not really doing something all that different, my girlfriend gives me a reason to not just dream of moving on to better things, but really believe too.

Stick around and now the goal is to tell you about more of them as they happen.