Dust in the Digital Wind
The middle day of January draws to its close. It would be disgustingly ordinary to try to start any habit on January 1. I’m going to be different– because I’m an individual! I’m an American! I’m a man! I’m 40!– Not yet, but close enough to feel its daunting shadow darken my path.
It’s been a week since the debacle of writing for 30 minutes straight without pause– or coherence. That post did register the milestone of being the 100th post on this site, which is all it should be remembered for. But I quickly increased that sum from 100 to 225 by importing the posts from Squirrelly Writer and my “jasonwrites” blog at Xanga.
In the process, I discovered the fate of Xanga. It was the home of my first blog, begun just over thirteen years ago. Through the interactions I had with other bloggers there, I made many friends, a select few I met “offline,” and one of whom I married (no longer, if you’re new here). It was great fun in its heyday, and had tremendous potential. But it never had the human resources behind it to solve the myriad issues that plagued it. It tried to be a blogging platform, it tried to be a social network, and it got eclipsed on both fronts by the sites we are all so familiar with now. It all but dwindled to nonexistence, and now has been reintroduced as a WordPress clone.
Somehow I feel compelled to write and share this little obituary. The name “Xanga” may be meaningless to anyone of you reading it, but I wouldn’t be here writing and blogging now without it. It set me on my blogging journey, and profoundly changed my life. It gave me a venue to find sympathetic fellow human beings with whom I could share the tumult of my life. Now I will continue to seek that venue and continue that journey right here.
jasonwrites.blog 
I, for one, am glad you started so long ago Because it is wonderful to see the journey you’ve taken.
LikeLike
I am glad you get to be part of the journey moving forward 🙂
LikeLike
Well at least you tried… it’s good to have you on a new site…even though I’m sure you will miss your old stomping grounds… it’ll be awesome to start fresh and new!
LikeLike
But Julie, this IS my old stomping ground– however, I have preserved the Squirrel avatar.
LikeLike
Hee hee I meant xanga was your old original grounds.
LikeLike
I remember the Xanga blog. 🙂
LikeLike
Indeed, you may remember both of them, and WBS long before Xanga. Good grief, that is making me feel old. To this day I still have never visited the state of Louisiana, but now I live next door to it, so maybe that will finally be rectified. I’m always glad to her from you, Mel-Mellie-bo-bellie-banana-fanna-fo-fellie.
LikeLike
My original Xanga blog (litboiler) is, as the title says, dust in the digital wind… gone from the interwebs, but, fortunately, I did download an archive of it way back when. However, it’s not in a format that I can upload it into WordPress. It’s full of broken-link images and such. I managed to select-all-copy-paste the plain text from it, but with all the extraneous spaces, in its current state it would take a mere 65,535 pages to print out. I think a little editing is required.
LikeLike