It’s weird, the things that stick in memory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my mind, February 2002 was cold and snowy. Who knows if that’s true – but that’s how it’s stuck in my mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was working at a company in Minnetonka whose death spiral, which incompetent management had started long before the post 9\/11 “Dot Bomb” reared its head. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
9\/11 had happened five months earlier. And my own personal collapsing tower, a divorce, had happened not long before that<\/em>. I was living with my two kids – at the time, 8 and 10 years old – and getting used to a whole new way of living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And as both worlds – the wider one and my personal one – spun out of control, I found myself missing the voice I’d lost fifteen years earlier, when I’d gotten whacked from my first, and to that point last, talk radio gig at KSTP. I didn’t need, or ask for, much – but having some <\/em>way of getting what I was thinking out to someone other than my kids, dog and cats was something I was craving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And which seemed so, so far away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I”d come back from lunch, to an office across the lake from Ridgedale Mall, and was already bored out of my mind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I went to Time.com – and it occurs to me, it may have been among the last times I ever did that – and read an article about “The New Generation of Conservative Intellectuals Online”. One of the featured thinkers was none other than Andrew Ferguson – and his “blog”, the Dish<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And, most importantly, a sidebar on how to create <\/em>a “blog”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I ran home that night, fed the kids, put them to bed, and went out to “Blogger.com” and started setting thngs up…<\/p>\n\n\n\n …and got to my first roadblock; picking a name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not sure where “Shot in the Dark” came from: I think it was mostly a play on words, encompassing the DIY\/no idea what I”m doing vibe that I felt, as well as my nascent Secone Amendment activism <\/p>\n\n\n\n Either way, that next morning I got up at 5:30AM – the only “me” time I really had at that point – and started writiing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And nearly every weekday morning for the past 18 years, it’s been the same routine. My kids are grown up and moved out, and one of them has a kid of his own. My little writing hobby that drew maybe half a dozen readers a day morphed into what I have today – four-figure daily readership – and so much more, a social circle and a radio show and a bunch of friends I can’t imagine my life without, and a whole world the doors to which I thought had slammed shut in the eighties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway – today Shot in the Dark <\/em>turns 18. It can vote and join the military. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And I’d like to thank you all for being here, and being the reason I do it, all these years; some of you, literally since just about Day 1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks. And here’s to 18 more. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s weird, the things that stick in memory. In my mind, February 2002 was cold and snowy. Who knows if that’s true – but that’s how it’s stuck in my mind. I was working at a company in Minnetonka whose death spiral, which incompetent management had started long before the post 9\/11 “Dot Bomb” reared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73243,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73242\/revisions\/73243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}