That this blog kicked off.

The day had gone like this:

1. I’d been at work – at a squalid little dotcom in Minnetonka.
2. I’d gone to an appointment. There, I found a copy of Time magazine.
3. There, I read a piece about the new breed of conservative intellectuals. One of them was Andrew Sullivan. A sidebar discussed “blogger.com”, the software he used to produce the site.
4. I raced back to work and went to Andrewsullivan.com for the first time. And read. And read. And read.
5. And, as you can see by the timestamp, I went home after work, fixed dinner, got the kids situated, raced out to Blogger.com, and launched the first-ever version of Shot In The Dark.

This blog and I have been through a lot together – and although I haven’t used it as a personal diaryblog, little bits and pieces do dribble out. This blog has seen me through:

• A gruelling year of unemployment and underemployment (five and six months, respectively)
• Four serious girlfriends. Er…three and a half serious girlfriends, to get technical.
• Rediscovering a social life. When I started the blog, I was a barely-divorced guy whose perspective was shaped by years of dealing with little kids. Via blogging, I met a whole new social circle – the NARN guys, the MOB, the Salem Radio crew, and many, many more.
• I recovered some old acquaintances – I can’t tell you how many high school friends I’ve reconnected with via this blog; hey Chris, Nancy, Martha, Dan, Janice, Tom, Jack, Alayne, Pennie, both of you Dans…well, OK. I guess I can tell you how many.  Also some different acquaintances, from college (yo, MLP and Mr. P) and afterward (hiya, Bergses!).  Anyway, here’s a shout-out to Jamestown in the house.
• And of course, best of all, all the many new friends I’ve made.
• Six jobs (all but the first and the most recent of them contracting gigs)
• A near-accidental fall back into my first love, talk radio, including realizing the great dream from my twenties, hosting a national network talk show (actually, 13 times, for Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager).
• Astounding growth from my kids; when the blog started, Bun was 10 and Zam had just turned nine (the day before, in fact). Today, they are 16 and (yesterday) 15. My elementary-school kids are now teenagers, and perilously close to going out into the real world.

I have a lot of readers who’ve been regulars since almost day one. How can you tell if you’re one of them? If you remember when the site’s original greenish-tan background, you’ve been reading a long time! I implemented the site’s current basic design in March of 2003, and have managed to keep things more or less the same despite leaving Blogger for Moveable Type in March of ’04, and again for WordPress in November of ’06. Expect a direct-to-brain feed, at this rate, by October of 2010.

Anyway – thanks to all of you who stop by and brighten my day by paying attention to my logorrheac screedmongering.

Update: Commenter “Old Buddy” – who is among the list of high school classmates I list above, although I’m not saying which – notes that I forgot to shout out to Pennie. D’oh! How could I forget? Hey, Pennie!

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 1:06 am and is filed under mitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.