So sue has tagged me with a writing idea. Using her description, I am to "participate in a blog meme about the evolution of my blog." I'm not really sure if it's a meme as it's not a series of personal questions and that's how I've come to define a meme, but it is still certainly personal in nature.

Blogging: An Evolution
by Kevin Apgar, Blog.D. (Doctorate of Blogging)

I was never one for writing. Apparently I was decent at it to the point where teachers enjoyed reading the drivel I turned in as homework and research projects. But for fun? No.

I never kept a journal when I was growing up. Never wanted to. Always struck me as "girlie."

Actually, I just never thought my life warranted any sort of documentation. I was an average kid growing up. Played with toys, played outside, had friends, went to school, played in the occasional sports team, grew up, liked girls, sucked at dating, graduated, went to college, held some jobs, tried dating a little more, discovered drinking, graduated (I think), went to grad school, worked a lot more. You get the idea.

In grad school, I took my first Web design course. For a beginner project, I set up a page with movie reviews. For a second project, I expanded what I had designed before rather than start anew. I had to come up with something, so I decided to create a static journal-like entity that contained just my personal views of things that I had witnessed in life. I wrote maybe a paragraph or two per entry and those entries only came out a couple times a week, if that.

Then I actually launched the site on GeoCities. This moved over to Yahoo and became a slightly more regular affair. I would write a couple more times per week and expand the length of my entries by a little more each time as I became more accustomed to my own personal writing style.

In 2005, after seven years of maintaining my static "blog" on Yahoo, I began talking with Dave and he convinced me that using blogware was the way to go. Basically, I did it because of RSS feeds and the idea that people could subscribe to my site and be notified of updates instead of having to remember to stop by every day or so.

The other big benefit was the ease of use. Without having to worry about coding, I was free to focus more on my writing and this resulted in me writing every day, much to Katie's chagrin. For 15 months straight, I posted every day, sometimes even twice a day. Now, however, I stick mostly to weekdays unless I'm moved enough to write something up on Saturday or Sunday.

I stick with it despite the constant claims that blogging is dead and while watching many of my fellow bloggers drop off the face of the Earth (we still miss you Brando and Chanakin!) simply because I love the interaction that is fostered in the blogging community and I've met way too many cool people to want to say bye. It's a very fulfilling hobby. I write, you read, we interact. It doesn't get much better than that.

And that's the story of my blog-volution.

No, I'm not tagging anyone. If you want in, just steal the idea and let me know you did so I can read it.