billpalmer.net

Sometimes we get busy, distracted and we miss out on the milestones we thought we were looking forward to until they're nearly upon us or until they've passed. Which reminds me that my birthday is two weeks from now, and proves to me for the first time that you do in fact stop paying attention to such things once you've reached thirty. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at "April 2nd" on iProng Magazine's publishing roster, it's a Wednesday so there's an issue coming out that day, without it lighting up in my head until now that the date is also my birthday. I don't have any plans.

But my impending thirty-first year isn't the milestone in question today. No, it's one that I vaguely knew was coming up but didn't know exactly when, I knew it was in March or May, something with an M, but couldn't tell you much more specifically. Just now I looked it up and it turns out that five years and eight days ago, I started blogging, right here on this very site. Actually my recollection is that I started out not at billpalmer.net but at billpalmer.blogspot.com because that's about as much as I knew about blogs and domains and hosting and all that good stuff back in the day.

I remember the night I first started it. Where I was sitting, what computer I was using, wondering if anyone would ever actually see it or even know that it existed. Perhaps it's ironic, at least by Alanis' definition, that my five year blogging anniversary came and went during a month and a half long stretch of nothingness here which represents the emptiest, most barren stretch this blog has ever seen.

Too busy living to do any writing? That's not an excuse, nor is it accurate. Look at the magazine and you'll see that I write for a living. And on Twitter I post roughly twenty updates about my life per day, so you could say that the past nine months have represented the most active blogging I've ever done. I'm just not doing it here.

I've been tempted, sorely, to conclude that my Twitter postings are my blog now, and even considered hard-wiring them so they show up here automatically. But then I had another thought, a revelation that didn't come to me until I started writing this extended monologue. Can everything that's happening in my life, all my thoughts about everything, be boiled down to a series of sub-140 character quips? And the answer is no. I'm happy when I'm writing, and this blog has no character limits, so I can't help but wonder if it isn't time to get back to it.

Five years of blogging here is a long time, especially for someone like me. There hasn't been any stage of my life that's lasted more than five years. iProng will reach the milestone in ten months, and that's really just getting started if anything, but it's evolved so much since its inception that while I still feel like I'm working toward to same goal, I can't pretend it's the same beast.

But this blog, I don't know. It's still just me putting words to a page. I've changed more than it has, not the other way around. It started out as a Macs in Education blog, but that's just because that's what was on my mind at the time. Later it became a Macintosh general blog after I'd left education circles and wanted to take on the entire industry. Once that ran its course and I found I'd parked myself journalistically over on the iPod side of the fence, the blog followed along. And when that led to a real publication, the blog followed me around wherever the publication led me.

So why is it now that things have taken off, now that they're really happening, now that I've got so much going on that I'm bursting on the insides wanting to tell the whole world about it and having to almost duct tape my mouth shut to keep from blowing the surprises before it's time for them to be published, that I'm leaving my blog blank for a month at a time? Maybe that's just it. At any given time these days there are in fact things I'm not ready to share, I want to but it's not the appropriate time, so rather than blog with those self-limitations I subconsciously opt not to blog at all.

It's the biggest one yet, but beyond whispering it to a handful of people who aren't going to spill it anyway, I haven't said word one about who's going to be on the March 26th cover. Nine days ago when I was able to confirm it, I was bouncing off the ceiling. Four days ago when I conducted the interview, I felt more alive than at any other point in my career. Today I got ahold of the cover photo and created the cover layout, the whole time having to remind myself that this was in fact real and not just me mocking up an imaginary cover. And yet I've said nothing publicly. That's not true. I've hinted, in fact more hinting than most folks probably realize, but the most definitive thing I've given away so far is the fact that there's a pink suit involved. And the more I look at the cover photo, I'm now inclined to think that the pink suit might actually be closer to beige.

Do I keep dropping hints, keep being sly? Am I letting out a little bit at a time just to keep from bursting, or am I just trying to build hype? This doesn't need hype. Not this one. Not with this kind of timing. Sometimes things just come together. You'll understand once it's been released. But regardless it'll be far from the last time I'll have something cool, something groundbreaking, that I'll want to immediately shout about from the rooftops, and I'll again be wresting with just how tightly I can keep a secret, and whether I should.

In this age of new media and openness we're not supposed to have secrets, are we? Just this evening during a conversation with a friend I bragged that in an age where our favorite websites, employers, and governments are tracking our personal information in ways they have no business doing, I've managed to beat the system by purposely putting more out there about myself than anyone could ever hope to learn about me through underhanded means.

Want to know where I'm at? Check twitter. Want to know who my friends are? Check facebook. Want to know what I had for lunch today? I'm sure that's out there somewhere. Want to reach me? Everyone knows how to, in too many ways to count. And that's the way I want it. But unlike the person I interviewed this week, it doesn't have to be that way for me. I'm not a rock star, people aren't asking for my autograph, I'm not trapped into anything. I could do what I do for a living while remaining in total anonymity, and yet instead I choose to put everything out there about myself to an almost over the top extent.

So why am I not willing to tell you who's on the cover of the March 26th issue? Because you don't want to know. Not yet anyway. I tell you now and it's old news by the time it comes out. It's like when you're a kid and you stumble upon your impending Christmas present a week early and that fact makes you happy for, well, a week, until the day comes and you realize that the only suspense remaining is whether or not you can pretend to look surprised. So I'm not going to ruin it for you. That's it, I'm actually sacrificing by not telling you. I'm taking a hit for you. I'm keeping my mouth stapled shut for once, for the next week and a half, so it'll come as a surprise to you when the issue drops.

The things I do for you guys. Yeah, I know, if I really cared about you guys I'd start blogging again on a more regular basis. We'll see. But in any case, here's to another five years.

And you know, I think that suit might actually be pink after all.