Number nine…number nine…number nine…

In a world where social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter become more and more popular with each passing day…blogs are starting to become the equivalent of a Model T.  For those of you who are still plugging away in Upper Blogistan—good on ya.  For those of you who tried it a couple of months and then got distracted by things like a job and real life activities…well, I’d say something like “a pox on your houses” but I probably wouldn’t mean it.  I can certainly understand where you’re coming from (man); blogs are often a labor of love, and outside pressures can sometimes be the co-respondent in the eventual divorce.

Nine years ago on this very date, I decided to see what this whole “blogging” thing is all about: my online friend Laura innocently asked me “When are you getting a blog?” and my visits to the premiere political snark site that is World O’Crap convinced me that “Hey—this doesn’t look too hard.”  So Thrilling Days of Yesteryear was born, the title borrowed from Fred Foy’s familiar “return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear” phrase on radio’s The Lone Ranger.  In its early days (when it was still living in the tonier section of Salon Blogs), TDOY was dedicated to my OTR collecting hobby, with occasional detours into classic movies and vintage television.  After four years at Salon Blogs, I decided to move the operation to China Blogger, where I didn’t have to pay for the privilege.  (For those of you concerned that I was outsourcing American jobs, I should in my defense point out that I only had one employee at the time…myself.)

The Salon Blog neighborhood is gone now…I mean, really gone—as in “Alderaan vaporized gone” and what I (and my BBFF Stacia) was able to salvage will eventually re-emerge on another blog as soon as I find a way to cram an additional 24 hours in a day.  I have to be honest: Thrilling Days of Yesteryear has rarely put a nickel in my pocket (my supportive parents never miss a chance to remind me of that—one of my favorite descriptions of blogging comes from M. Carter @ the Movies, who termed it “my tedious, time-gobbling, no-paying labor of love”) but it did attract the attention of outlets like Radio Archives and Radio Spirits, who hired me to compose liner notes for their CD collections (and in the case of RS, pay me to babble about the same stuff I do here on their blog).  So you can see why after nine years I’m still plugging…it’s something I dearly love.

With the ninth anniversary, I’ve kind of made a promise to myself that I’m going to make more of an effort to do more blogging in the coming year; the Mayberry Mondays and Serial Saturdays features are always fun to do, but I really should expand beyond those parameters.  To those of you who make visiting TDOY a regular thing—whether it be daily, weekly or monthly—as always, thanks for encouraging my behavior.