Happy Blog Birthday!

Yesterday, December 26, 2008 makes one year since this blog actually began. I don't know whether I should celebrate now or wait until New Year's Day when I actually wrote my first real post. Yesterday was the actual day that I came up with the name, picked a template and launched "Keith's Space". I still wasn't that hung up on blogging and didn't originally intend to do it that long but, as I've stated before, once I got started, I got hooked (like a lot of you) and here I am today... the author of 301 posts.

I've read a lot of other people's blogs and most of them echo my experiences... like having from none to maybe two steady readers and then gradually discovering that there is an entire community of bloggers out there. I certainly enjoy reading other people's blogs almost as much as I enjoy writing my two blogs. Each blog is as unique as the person writing it's personality.

This is a wonderful medium for both social interaction and political change. I'm told that bloggers get information quicker than the traditional media. I also hear that quickness is at the expense of accuracy. This may be true but, the internet and the blogosphere has certainly given the old line journalists a run for their money. Everyone from entertainers and athletes to politicians now have a blog and use bloggers to get their messages across.

I didn't start a blog to save the world or to effect social change... I'll leave that to The Field Negro and Lisa Vasquez ("Black Women Blow The Trumpet"), who do it so much better and more articulately than I do. I began blogging for the same reason as a lot of people... to vent and to get my thoughts and points of view out there. I wrote a lot of things down on paper and then filed them away in folders, never to see the light of day again. People were always telling me, "You ought to try and publish some of the things you write." I must admit that I did try (half-heartedly) and I appeared in a few magazines and the local newspaper (Op-Ed section) a couple of times. I had a few of my poems and one short story published in a free literature magazine and in the underground press but, that was nothing compared to this medium.

A friend of mine started a blog back in 2005 and turned her posts into a book called "The Playa Slayer", which wound up on the Essence Magazine book list. She told me that I should look into this new medium called "blogging" but, I kinda blew it off. It wasn't until my wife's constant beating of the drum about blogging that I actually took what was being said to heart.

In the beginning, my writing was a little rusty. I had stopped writing altogether for about five years but, I didn't get discouraged. I kept plugging away... hitting and missing. I've watched myself grow and mature steadily day by day (i.e. I can look at a post I've written and not gag). I'm happy with this blog and I'm ecstatic about my other blog, which began with me loading a lot of those old poems I wrote back in college to the site. It has now evolved into a blog with brand new fiction, poetry, and erotica as well as an extra... the spotlighting of black art/artists.

In this past year I've met many wonderful and creative people (too numerous to name here... check out my blogroll and "followers") and have "borrowed" and learned a lot about writing from them. I hope that some of them have learned and borrowed things from me too. Like I said, this is a great new medium with a lot of potential and I'm proud and grateful to be a part of it.

So, Happy Birthday to "Keith's Space" and here's to 301 more posts that continue to make you think, make you laugh, and keep you coming back for more. Much love to everyone who has come through here...