Thrice around the sun

The journey continues...
San Francisco, CA, March 2007 [Click to enlarge]

Today is a very special day in Pitkinville: it's been three years since Written Inc. first went live. Since this is my first blog, it's also been three years since I became a blogger.

Funny, but it seems like I've been at it longer than that. I don't remember what it was like to not have my own blog. I say that with a smile on my face and warmth in my heart, because this has been a great journey for me. I hope you've enjoyed it, too.

What started as a simple exercise in learning the ins and outs of a nascent medium has evolved into a platform for my words and my images. I've become part of a vibrant community of writers, all of whom never cease to amaze me with their intelligence, creativity, humor and kindness.

I've learned that words and images, the basic building blocks of creativity in my world ever since I was a kid, can go much further than the yellowing pages of the albums that once represented the final resting place of so much of my work. I've learned that these new media can send a journalist's vision to places barely imagined the first day I walked wide-eyed into j-school.

I don't know where this ends, or if it ever really needs to end. Indeed, so many of the folks who I once read and who read me when I first went live are no longer blogging. Yet I feel no need to put my pen down. I write for a living, so not writing in this admittedly informal, self-edited capacity seems almost unthinkable. It's like the photographer putting down his camera (equally unthinkable), the cyclist parking his bicycle (ditto), the dreamer silencing his aspirations (yup, same thing.) This is me. And I'll keep writing and shooting as long as that fire to create and share continues to burn.

I love setting aside a few quiet minutes every day to share a thought or two, to upload a picture that means something to me, to share my view of the world and read the comments of once-complete strangers who I've come to know as friends. It isn't work, because I love being a part of this wild little world. I hope you love it, too. And I hope you're around to share future milestones with me. Thank you for being part of the journey thus far.

Onward...

Your turn: In case you missed them, here are the links to my first-ever post, the first anniversary entry and last year's anniversary entry. If you have a moment, I hope you'll read them, then come back here and tell us why milestones matter, and why the blogging community often seems to be so much more than mere pixels on a screen.

About the image: This is a section of track for San Francisco's famous cable cars. I thought it would be appropriate to include now, as it symbolizes the journey, and the fact that the direction can change when you least expect it. It's also a pretty atypical picture, the kind of image that I tend to capture while I look where everyone else is not. Maybe that's my life's philosophy. Or not...whatever. Wherever I end up, I'll never be able to say it hasn't been a fun trip.