This Is The Story of a Blog...

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven..."

-- Ecclesiastes 3:1

A blogger whose reading I've always liked, "Trouble in Shangri-La", author of the Dubious Wonder blog, has decided to call it quits. Sad for me... I will miss her writing. However, she said she started her blog with the purpose of healing, and she's achieved that goal. I am happy for her, and of course, I wish her well. Besides, once you've achieved your goal, that goal then becomes a moot point. Time to set a new goal, right?

Once I read her farewell, that got me thinking about my own little corner of the 'Net. I've owned the JimMcKee.com domain for a couple of years now. I came to own it almost as a reflex. Several years ago, the person who owned JimMcKee.com had a truly awful, ugly web site up. It was full of just the tackiest web work you could imagine. I vowed to myself that if the domain were ever available, I would grab it, just to save the world from that kind of nonsense being attached to a great name like Jim McKee.

So, a couple of years ago, I checked it on a whim. Surprisingly, it was finally available, so I leapt at the chance. But, the next question was: What to do with the thing? My original idea was that I wanted to do something similar to a newspaper column, with the exception that, since I wasn't being paid by anyone, I would therefore not be answering to anyone except my own conscience (which tends to be the 800-pound gorilla, should I go astray). Yes, I was going to be the next George Will, pontificating about the issues of the day as I saw fit. The only thing stopping me was my own laziness. I know how to make web sites, but really, if I was going to create content for the thing on a regular basis, I knew I didn't want to get bogged down with techy stuff.

So, what did I do? Nothing.... well, except think about it. A lot. Kicking around different ideas. I actually envisioned a banner that would resemble a newspaper masthead. Blogs? Yeah, I'd heard of them. Online versions of people's diaries, right? Not exactly what I'd had in mind.

Fast-forward to March of this year. A good friend of mine (actually, I'd hoped it would develop into more, but c'est la vie...) turned me on to her blog. It let me see a whole 'nother side of her... but also opened my eyes to the current State of the Blog. From there, I started random blog surfing, which got me thinking once again about launching my web site... only as a blog. And it wouldn't be so much about current events, but more about my sense of humor and my creativity. That, my friends, is the point at which JimMcKee.com was conceived. (So, you can disregard those stories about the back seat of a '65 Mustang.)

To bring the whole thing full-circle, what do I hope to achieve with this site? In my wildest dreams, I would like to get a contract for a book of humorous essays, and from there, a nationally syndicated radio talk show. Nothing serious, like Sean Hannity or Al Franken, but something kind of fun and light. Will it come true? Who knows? Stranger things have happened. Courtney Cox got her chance at fame from being in the front row at a Bruce Springsteen concert, got pulled up on stage, it was captured for a music video, and the rest is history. My point is that, if I personally have any healing to do, this ain't it. (Or is it? They say that laughter is the best medicine.) Either way, don't expect me to pack it in any time soon.

Oh, and I do have one other purpose for this site: to keep the JimMcKee.com domain out of the hands of dweebs.