It's my Blogiversary -- and, look, I got presents

This award comes from both Jeni and Hilda. I am very pleased that both of you thought to send this my way.

Looking into this a little, I see that Jeni got the award from Linda, another frequent visitor here. And, if you would like more information about the "Shameless Lions," you should click here.

Now, however, I'm going to be a big party-pooper and not send this along to five more blogs -- although there are many deserving in the Sidebar, believe me.

Instead, I'm going to get just a tad introspective, because, well, sometimes that just happens on anniversaries, even silly ones like "Blogiversaries."

My Blogger profile says I adopted the nom de plume Curmudgeon in January 2005. I did it because it appeared to be the only way I could comment on Older Daughter's blog. Older Daughter had gone to Europe for a semester, during her junior year of college, and had started a blog as a way of communicating with everyone back home.

Then her computer acted up and her internet connection turned out to be not so well connected. In the meantime, I'd started my own blog. I don't remember what it was called. No one read it -- except Older Daughter, on occasion, because she knew about it and was embarrassed by even anonymous references to her. Because she knew it was me making those references. I deleted that first blog before starting this one.

I'm sort of sorry I did that, now.

I'd like to see some of those first posts again.

Then I started up this Second Effort (the name thereby explained) two years ago today. Why? For one reason, I'd become more and more Internet conscious -- I had just signed up for a second professional website that wound up giving me a couple of useless phone calls a month and cost me about $2,400 per year. (I finally discontinued it within the past couple of months.)

But I wanted that site then because I was moving my office and I was afraid that people -- prospective clients (i.e., other attorneys who might hire me) -- would not be able to find me when my address and phone number changed.

I'd had a good year in 2005 -- I went to trial on a case I'd been handling since 1996. Unfortunately, because I was almost exclusively devoted to that case for some considerable time before the trial, I wasn't building other business. And the carrier who'd sent that case to me was no longer writing business. I had finally settled the last part of my one substantial personal injury case -- but I couldn't cash the settlement check. So I was worried -- worried about the uncertainties ordinarily attendant to moving and worried, too, about how to replace a consistent source of income.

Well I moved, but I didn't replace the income in 2006. I didn't have a bad year on paper -- in part because I couldn't cash the check from the settlement of that PI case until well into January... and even then there was a major problem. Oh, I blogged about that.

I did have a couple of good hourly cases in 2006 -- one shot deals -- but, would you believe I have already billed more billable hours in 2007 (billable as in I have reasonable expectations of being compensated for that time at some point) than I did in all of 2006? And I had cancer this year. My total income for this year will lag behind my wife's -- and she teaches in a Catholic grammar school.

The uptick in hourly work is a recent phenomenon, a (very, very welcome) development during the course of my recuperation. It portends well for next year. I hope.

Through it all, I've been blogging -- blogging to try and preserve my version of the family history (anonymously, so as not to embarrass anyone in my family), blogging to make smart-aleck observations about the news, blogging just to try and be funny. To hone my chops as someone who can write funny stuff, and not just dry and serious legalese. Sometimes I get up on my soapbox and holler. And, also, I blog for company.

I work alone. And I miss my former Undisclosed Location where there were 20 or 25 people milling about on a common floor. Four of us moved here when the firm we were renting from decided it wanted to get out of the subleasing business. But that was too small a group. And one of our group died five months after we moved.

No, it wasn't me.

Anyway, blogging has also provided a world-wide water cooler for me, where I can swap lies and truths and jokes and shaggy dog stories with people of all walks of life and backgrounds. That's been a great comfort for me, too, even if sometimes I spend too much time at the water cooler and not enough time with my nose to the grindstone.

Nor have I been holding up my end of the bargain, lately. My return visits have, in many cases, slowed dramatically -- no longer once a day, or even once a week. I can only apologize.

It's not just that I'm working more. I have a new project -- a blogging project, actually -- where I'm putting to use some of the great advice I've absorbed in these past two years. I won't say more than that. But the project may be working. There weren't 400 visitors to that other blog two months ago... there's over 4,000 now and the numbers may (should?) really go up soon. That will absorb most of my blogging time, particularly in the next 60 days.

But it's not as much fun as this blog has been for me. And it won't be, even if it takes off as I hope it may.

That's why I wish this blog were on the cusp of a great growth spurt. But it isn't. In two years it's gone from zero to something. And there are people who stop by regularly, or semi-regularly, and seem to enjoy what I'm doing here. And I'm happy about that.

So, it's me who should say Happy Blogiversary to all of you.

Thanks.