Barry has been one of the most important commenter on my site, he has always brought a perspective that is at times so different than mine that it comes as a surprise when we end up being so similar on personality test on facebook. I am not even kidding he is the top % match for about 6 different tests. It is always a pleasure when I get to mention a fellow blogger and maybe get people to go and read some of his posts and the latest meme gives me just that chance. He tagged me for a meme called Blog evolution where I am supposed to choose 5 posts that serve as markers of the evolution of this place. After you read this make sure you go and visit the Inn of the Last Home.

As I started to do it I realized how difficult it really was to get this done. I have been blogging now for 4 years and have created quite a bit of content, over 1100 posts to be exact. I have also had some articles reposted on blogcritics, phoronix and even had some serious traffic spikes that made me upgrade my hosting plan. So how do I chose just 5 posts out of 1000?

My blog started as a means for my writing to improve. I feel it actually has, even though judging your progress is kind of hard I know that when I go back and read old post I do find plenty of things I would do differently. My first posts were very much mundane details of my life and being new to Michigan. My life was beginning a rollercoaster phase and it was just about to take off. Even though when I got off the roller coaster I ended up puking my guts out, I did end up meeting my future wife via the blog world so it could not have been too bad. Back then I started to write once in a while about my passions and my ideas and one of the first posts that shows this is when I wrote about Colombian Art. I have since started a whole blog dedicated to Colombia and showing some of the positive stuff, but that post shows how my blog was back then.

Slowly but surely I went into a Quote phase. I would use quotes that talked about my current mood and then explore them in a totally different way. I hardly ever spoke about what I was really feeling or going through but dissecting the quotes truly helped me cope with some tough times. Here I wrote about stress and it is amazing how relevant this post is even now.

At the end of 2006 my life changed quite a bit, I met my wife face to face after knowing each other for years online. I also finally realized that this blog was a lot more than what I gave it credit for and I started to use it as a direct outlet for my thoughts. I did not feel like I had to beat around the bush anymore and I could express myself. In this post you can see how much more direct my writing became and how supported I felt by having the woman that would become my wife by my side.

During this last year I have been trying to write about more set topics. I have really started to document more about my KC experience and have done some comparison posts. I like having two subject to write about in one post, it does not put me in the box that sometimes a single post does, and then I start to ramble. Here is where I started the series of KC vs Chicago that I have not completed yet, but really plan to.

My blog has changed a lot, I write about a variety of topics. Some are very geeky like how cool Ubuntu is or how to travel through the animal kingdom. Some topics are a little more serious and filed under culture, to the point that I was accused to have not been as funny lately. I am pretty happy with how this place is now and I hope my readers are too, I am also very open to suggestions on topics… if there is ever anything you want to learn about that you think I might have a perspective on, don’t be afraid to ask… maybe it is time to start another round of interviews.

In the mean time I am supposed to tag 5 people so my victims are…
Bea, Daniel, Filegirl, HitCoffee and Andrea.