I started this blogging adventure 3 years ago today, my official anniversary I suppose.

How I got here really started when I made a blogger site pretty much on a whim.  I was dealing with some emotionally challenging issues, and needed a place to vent/whine etc.  I made my blogspot site and a live journal site, but I never really used the live journal site, I suppose it is still there somewhere.  I like the blogspot interface a bit more.

I posted 5 times that first month, once in June and then dropped it. 

At that time I decided to journalize my life on my website instead, and my first site on Yahoo was followed by a site on my cablespeed web space account. The site was deeply revealing and intensely personal, intentionally. I needed to deal with some things and that helped me.

I transferred it to my own domain in January 2004.  This was followed by a complete revamp and slight depersonalization of the site in Ocober 2004.  The old site had been therapeutic, but now it was time to make it a bit less painful and personal.

About that same time, October 24th 2004 I relaunched my blogger efforts.  I was incensed at the political shenanigans of the presidential campaign, though I admit I was fairly biased against Kerry and his players.  This is when I realized I wanted to pursue writing and blogging with more then just casual energy.

At the time though, my wife was undergoing surgery, and I only posted occasionally. But in March 2005 things began to pick up.

The Washington Governors race and resulting fallout and lawsuits captivated my blogging thoughts, and made me open my eyes to a lot of the politics around me. Terry Schiavo inspired my writing a great deal,  and led me to some critical praise, as did an essay I wrote about Harry Potter. 

In May 2004  I stumbled onto my new blog title, Leaning Straight up, after dealing with a lot of rude people on both sides of the aisle. 

This is when my blog journey began in earnest.

In July and August my stats began to climb as I was given some exposure at a Pacific Northwest news site, Orbusmax.com with this essay:

The Oath his mother cannot understand

It still stands as one of my best essays to date, and that month my site stats peaked at 500 hits during a month for the first time ever.  That essay stands as the real turning point of my writing, in my opinion.

During the end of 2005 I began feeling the limitations of blogger.com, and after a near fatal error, I decided I wanted more creative control.

So I ordered a new domain, and began the process of designing my blog in Wordpress on my own site.  While working on that I again found myself getting some unusual critical note during my blogging of the UW/Pappy Boyington broohaha.  For the first time I sent my blogs around, and a couple were re-posted and used as reference.

My site stats for February were an astounding 1200+ due to cross-links at some nationally ranked sites.

Some excellent advice from those sites helped me with the creation and design of this site, as you see it today.

The final touch was courtesy of my daughter Kayla who designed and created the banner graphic.

And so in March of 2005 this site was launched live.  And the response has been amazing. 

I learned some hard lessons.  A blogging mentor advised me that blogging would require hours of work if I wanted to succeed.  She was right.  If anything she understated it.  I spend at a minimum 2 horus nightly cross checking, writing, tracking and posting.

It has paid off.  I have had amazing results and gratifying success since my launch.

My Blogger site stats when I archived it had a bit under 4000 lifetime hits, most in the final 8 months of the site’s operation.

In the 2 months of live operation here, however, I have nearly eclipsed the 10,000 site visits mark.  The TTLB Ecosystem ranks me a Large Mammal, (whereas I started as an insignificant microbe) and I have broken into the top 325 blogs once.  The ranking is somewhat of an illusion more then anything, as it doesn’t poll by real popularity, but by site connections; but there is still a huge measure of success there.

Michelle Malkin has given me a hat tip twice.  MSNBC’s Slate.com featured one of my essays. Memeorandum has linked me at least a dozen times. Stop the ACLU, Blogs for Bush, Sister Toldjan and a few other well known blogs have cross-linked my blogs.

In short, I may be a newbie, and I am a junior member of the team, but I feel included for the first time.  It is not huge success by most people’s measure, but by mine it is.  I have the respect of my peers, the many bloggers that I share connections with.

I am a Blogger.

My greatest achievement was to be featured in a Daily KOS diary.  Complaining about me of course, but heck, I made the KOS.  It doesn’t matter that they did not agree with me, the point was I was considered worthy of rebuttal.

I regard that as a milestone.

And I have met some great bloggers, many wonderful people.  That alone is one of the greatest gifts.  I can laud my accomplishments, but friendships are priceless, and in that respect I am rich.

And my friends and family are proud of me.  How can I put a price on that?

So thanks for a great 3 years of total blogging existence, a great first year of active blogging and the greatest 2 months of full time serious blogging I could have hoped for.  It has been beyond my expectations and I humbly thank you, even as I look to the future with anticipation and hope.

Karl
Leaning Straight Up

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