Blogiversary

It's the one-year anniversary of my blog, and it's all Hugh Hewitt's fault. He had been encouraging his guests and some of the callers to his show to start blogs, and frankly he wanted everyone with something to say to start a blog.

Since I've never been one to be short of opinions, Hugh seemed to be talking to me. My first post was January 4, 2005.

I went to see Hugh at a book signing for Blog, and his advice to me then and in an email about that same time was to keep my posts short, so people would be willing to read them. I ignored his advice. "Short" is darn-near impossible for me.

Also at the book signing Hugh's producer, "Generalissimo" Duane, encouraged me to keep blogging and eventually I'd find my voice. I took his advice, and I found my voice.

And somewhere along the line, my self-perception changed. Early in the year I won a prize (a small devotional book) at my church's Women's Fellowship Breakfast for Most Unusual Hobby ("I blog." "What's a blog?" "Well... it's a website where you post your thoughts about different things...kinda"). And now I just say, "I'm a blogger," without explanation and without having to think about it.

In October, I went to GodBlogCon05, and there were two main questions that came up for me, and I'll take the time to answer them here.

Why SkyePuppy?

It's all AOL's fault. Back in the olden days, I used AOL for internet access, and I kept it as Plan B for when my high-speed internet went down (which DSL did often until I switched to cable internet). After months of no downtime, I decided to cancel AOL. Meanwhile at work, we used AOL Instant Messenger within our group. One morning AIM wouldn't let me log on, because my last paid AOL month had ended, and AOL was holding my screen name for ransom. They wouldn't let me use it unless I re-signed up for AOL.

I refused. But then I had to come up with a new screen name in a hurry, for work. So I went to my family ancestry. The male line on my dad's side goes back to the clan MacDonald of Sleat, which hails from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Plus, I had just bought a dog, my little Yorkie, Abby. "Skye Puppy." When it came time to figure out a blog name, I kept SkyePuppy, because I liked it, even though it doesn't sound serious enough to be tackling the serious issues of the day.

NOTE: Please do not IM the screen name, "SkyePuppy," because that name was already taken by somebody else, so I added some numbers to the name for work purposes.

Why do I try to remain anonymous?

This came up as a general question during one of the GodBlogCon sessions. Some of the bloggers (mostly male) said that if you don't say who you are, you imperil any credibility. It's like anonymous hate-mail that people get--if you don't have the courage to say who you are and why you should be taken seriously, then people will ignore you.

A valid point. But. I'm a divorced woman with a lovely teenaged (just turned 19) daughter living with me. I will not risk my own safety and especially that of my daughter to some nutcase who gets angry over what I said on my blog and tracks me down. Call me paranoid. I probably am.

This is also why I haven't emailed anyone who has posted comments and included an email address. I haven't figured out how to make my email server use SkyePuppy as the "From" name when I send emails. It puts my real name in there. Sigh!

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Thank you to all my dozens of faithful readers. Some of you read the political posts and ignore the personal. Others of you read the personal posts and ignore the political. I can understand both. What I can't understand is how anybody could ignore the weird animal science posts, because I absolutely can't resist them.

God bless you all.