One Year On

I don’t usually use a post on the front page to give an update about the blog itself, saving this space for an actual post instead. As of right now, it’s been one year since I started writing this thing. To those of you who have been here since the very beginning, thank you. I could never have made it to a year of writing without you. I like to speak my mind, but even I have my limits; if I had seen over and over that nobody was reading this, I probably would’ve stopped. I’d continue speaking my mind, but I’d do it in a different place. But enough about what would’ve happened without you; you’re here, and you keep coming back for more. Well, more is exactly what I’m going to give you.

To those of you who’ve joined us sometime over the past year, thank you. It may seem a little strange at first, but it gives me immeasurable satisfaction to be writing for people who I don’t personally know. Certainly, I know several of you, but to the readers I don’t know: welcome. This blog cannot grow without more of you, and yes, growth is only good.

To the random reader of this post months, or even years from now (hey, it happens!), come on in, stay a while, leave a comment or two and, if you like what you’re reading, share it! By virtue of reading this blog, all of you are awesome!

Looking Back, and Looking Forward

What a difference a year makes.  In the past year, we’ve gotten health care reform, Wall Street reform, campaign-finance reform, for what that ruling’s worth.  We’ve also gotten the Gulf Oil Spill, and far, far too many primary elections for anyone to blog about (though I sure tried!).  I’ve also changed over the last year.  Back when I started writing this thing, I was getting through some difficult personal issues, as well as starting at college.  Now, things couldn’t be any more different; I’m mostly back to normal, whatever normal is, and I think I’ve figured out this place (though honestly it’s changed so much over the summer most of us felt a little disoriented when we got back!).

As far as this blog goes, I’ve made a few changes over the last year such as adding the sharing features, pictures here and there, a poll every now and then, and several other minor things.  I’ve also tried adding a second writer; my main goal for this year is to get him to write more…  Of course, I want to continue growing this blog, and the best way to do that is to keep writing, and to write more frequently.

I looked back over that first week one year ago, and not only did I have a post every day, I had three on the first day!!  In a way, going forward will be a return to the past; I am significantly busier this year than I was last year, but I’m going to try and recapture some of that initial energy.  In between all the work I have this week, various club meetings, and possibly finding more than 4 or 5 hours of sleep somewhere in there, I’ll be pushing out posts.  I’ve been particularly bad about getting things up here lately, but I can think of 5 or 6 decent post topics currently on my mind.  When they’ll actually get posted is something else, but trust me, they will.  I can’t promise you that I’ll get one up every day, but I’ll sure try.

In addition, at some point I plan on switching from WordPress.com, the hosted back-end that this thing currently runs on, to the open source, self-hosted WordPress.org.  I realize this would be a lot more work than it already is, but I think the enhanced features will be worth it.  I’ll definitely be waiting at the very least until one of the school breaks to make the switch if it does indeed happen this year.  I might even wait until it’s grown quite a bit more to make the switch.

Update: Another thing I’ll try to get done this year is getting a logo for the blog.  If you are a/know any graphic designers, send me an e-mail via the Contact box, and we’ll talk.

Also, I’ll be working on getting the blog fanpage on Facebook to be better than it already is.  Right now, it’s just a glorified stream for getting my latest posts, but I’m working on fleshing it out a bit more.  Speaking of which, if you’ve seen a feature on another page that might work well, let me know and I’ll look into it.  In the meantime, head on over there and Like it.  You know you want to!

Here’s to another great year!

The One Year On by The New Age of Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.