Six years after

Exactly six years ago, I published my very first blog post. The petition I linked to at the end of that post was my very first attempt at fostering on-line activism. It was a great success story. When I was first made aware of that petition there were less than hundred Americans signed on. I'm by no means taking all the credit, but after two weeks of pitching it on every list serv and website I could think of that might respond, it had thousands of new names. It was exciting. I felt like I was making a difference.

I decided to post under a nym at first, so I called the first blog LA Stone Speaks. Eventually I decided that was too dorky and changed it to Last One Speaks so I wouldn't have to change the URL. I was so clueless in the beginning. I didn't really know how to do it, or what I wanted to do with it, I just knew I wanted to blog. I made a few big mistakes early. I used to get nasty emails for hotlinking to photos back in the day when bandwidth was expensive. And with my usual lack of tact, I managed to piss off a few big bloggers, including Instapundit in the first month. At the time he owned the blogosphere. It took me months to figure how to learn html and I never really mastered coding but I learned enough to get by and eventually figured out the rules of etiquette. I think I can claim to be a semi-popular blogger today.

Last One Speaks morphed several times, and now it's just my personal hideaway that I can't give up for a number of reasons, even though the traffic hardly justifies the effort anymore. But my reach can't be measured by my hit counters. Over the years I've guest posted on so many blogs I don't remember them all. Up until recently, I was actively posting to five blogs. Lately I've cut back to the original three but I'm far past the point of ever being anonymous again. When I started, you could google my name and get no hits. Now you can still find links on page 20...

In some ways I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with this blogging thing. Google presence aside, it surely didn't make me rich and famous. But I was never in it for that. I just have to write and always cared most about the connections I've made through this medium. I have a lot of friends all over the world whom I'm never met in person and stayed connected to a lot of friends I made in life, whom I would have lost touch with if I depended on snail mail. As long as there is an internet, I'll be blogging somewhere. I was born for this. I can't imagine my life without it or without you my dear friends and readers. Thanks for sticking with me. Without you, I wouldn't have made it this far. [graphic]

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