Ploafmaster General

It seems somewhat self-referential writing about my 1000th blog post AS the 1000th blog post, but so be it. Here we are. I warn you, this one’s not as short as my usual fare

I first decided to start maintaining a blog on my own domain back in 2005 because I thought it was important, useful, and fun to keep a persistent presence on the web. So now, nearly three years later, I continue to publish posts of limited value and substance for a very small audience. I don’t really have any more direction or focus than I did at the start, but I also don’t plan on stopping any time soon. You see, even while traditional blogging (who would have ever expected THAT would be a relevant term?) wanes as a form of personal expression on the Internet, I still enjoy it. It’s the perfect blend, for me, of light writing, opinion sharing, and harvesting of cool/wacky/provocative stuff.

I say “light writing” because it’s very rare that I actually write something substantive on my website. Often, even when rendering my opinion, I seldom write more than a few paragraphs. I almost never proofread (I should), and I infrequently edit past posts (I should do that, too…). This is all because, ironically, I’ve always HATED writing. My disdain for the medium was often so strong that I actually cultivated it during my school years into a strong talent for brevity. I often had the shortest papers in my English classes, and I barely eeked out enough to meet the 6000 word requirement for my English 200 research paper at VCU. Blogging provides me with an outlet for a different sort of writing, though. Here I can be unstructured, fast, loose, off-the-cuff. In my mind I see my blog posts as mostly one-sided conversations (monologues, if it makes you feel better), and I never proofread or edit my conversations.

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So now I look back at what’s changed over the last few years. I started off somewhat stereotypically (and unimaginatively) with a “Hello World” style entry, and it took me over a month to post something serious. From there I continued writing about a host of topics from personal experiences and travels to religion, humor, politics, and food. At some point my blogging hobby gained enough mass to become a fairly self-sustaining habit, and a lot’s happened in my life to fuel that; I’ve since traveled to four foreign lands, been linked up by the New York Times, and lost my father. I now post almost every day (though weekends are more spotty) at least once, and the struggle has shifted from “making it a habit” to finding a balance between collected Internet goodies and original content. Sometimes I have a nice hybrid, like commentary on a news article or artwork, but truth be told I’d rather provide something I created - something you can’t get from another blogger.

Beyond my expectations I actually have close to a dozen regular readers and far more RSS subscribers after all this time. It was never my intention to be a widely-known blogger, but I’m glad some people do read what my brain excretes, and happier still when folks participate through commenting. But it’s taken a loooooooooooong time to build up even this small readership, and with the recent addition of my site to RVABlogs.com, I have even more visitors daily who may not be familiar with the larger body of my silly work on Ploafmaster General. And so, to close my long-winded retrospective, I’ve compiled a short list of some of my favorite and/or most significant posts which best define what my blog has been and still is about. My opinions may have changed a little bit (and please see the “date posted” on each entry), but my general ideology is little different.

Enjoy, thanks for reading, and I hope you still are in another 1000 posts.

Creme de la Creme de General:
Getting Down to the Business of Getting Down
The Da Stinky Code
Vox Populi
Religion 1, Politics 1, and Politics 2 (Please read all three - they’re related)
I’m a Mac…
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons…
Hello Mr. President
Ask Dan - This link is for the category, so you can explore that failed experiment in its entirety
Little Miss Sunshine
(read: “stupid blog memes”)
Cannelloni alla Bolognese
Urban Manifesto
The Leisure Class, Wealth, and The West
America’s Passed Time
How to Enjoy a Shave
BoBo
Concerning Barack Obama’s Education Plan
Eine Kleine Nachtfilm - One of my first crazy homemade videos.
It’s Getting Better All The Time - To me, this marked a turning point in my photography.
SMS 160, Twitter 140
Out of My Depth - The convergence of nerdiness and art