{"id":1436,"date":"2021-11-08T06:30:21","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T12:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2021\/11\/08\/20211108-nineteenyears\/"},"modified":"2022-02-01T15:46:20","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T21:46:20","slug":"20211108-nineteenyears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2021\/11\/08\/20211108-nineteenyears\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on Nineteen Years of Blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the 19th anniversary of the Fire Ant Gazette. In the WWW (Wonderful World of Weddings), the 19th anniversary is represented by bronze &#8212; the metal, not the color &#8212; which apparently symbolizes strength and endurance, and I suppose that&#8217;s apropos for almost a fifth of a century of writing stuff for no apparent reason other than it&#8217;s what I like to do.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>When I started the blog, in the patriotically angry aftermath of 9\/11 &#8212; the start of the Golden Age of Blogging, may it rest in peace, I was game to take on all sorts of topics. I wrote about politics, local and otherwise; religion, mine or others; sociological and cultural phenomenon, controversial or &#8212; well, always controversial &#8212; and all without the self-realization that I didn&#8217;t know anything about any of that stuff. Thankfully, for myself and those of you kind and patient enough to bear with me, I finally figured that out and stopped. Well, mostly.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>I recently ran across a tweet by Peter Sagal, the author, <i>Runner&#8217;s World<\/i> columnist, and NPR correspondent, in which he laid out his rules for doing Twitter. I&#8217;ve <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">stolen<\/span> borrowed them because they also apply to blogging, and represent more or less my evolution from an ignorant firebrand-ish writer to an ignorant, easier-to-get-along-with dude. I&#8217;ll let you judge how closely I&#8217;m now adhering to most of Sagal&#8217;s suggestions:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/misc\/petersagalstwitterrules.png\" alt=\"Peter Sagal's Twitter Rules\" \/><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me how they would know when I posted something new on the Gazette. I was extremely flattered by the question, even as I secretly pitied their obviously skewed priorities, and I half-jokingly replied, &#8220;just visit the Gazette every day and you&#8217;ll know.&#8221; I really hope none of you are doing that because I don&#8217;t need any more pressure that I already put on myself, but, boy, do I appreciate all of you guys who do stop by periodically to do me the extreme favor of pretending to be interested in what I put on the Gazette.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>As I wrote above, I do this because I like doing it&#8230;but I like doing it because I like you. I hope we can stay together a while longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today marks the 19th anniversary of the Fire Ant Gazette. In the WWW (Wonderful World of Weddings), the 19th anniversary is represented by bronze &#8212; the metal, not the color &#8212; which apparently symbolizes strength and endurance, and I suppose that&#8217;s apropos for almost a fifth of a century of writing stuff for no apparent&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2021\/11\/08\/20211108-nineteenyears\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Reflecting on Nineteen Years of Blogging<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7087,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1436\/revisions\/7087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}