Way Belated 2nd Livejournal Birthday!
Despite being close to 6 months late, I'm keeping with the spirit of my first anniversary post and reviewing my writing over the past year. I'm going to stick only to journal entries written during that second year. So anything written after March 1st of this year (all of like 4 entries) doesn't qualify.
As I started reading my work during my second year of livejournaling, I feel like my writing is much improved. I've had a hard time narrowing down my favorite entries. This is a nice problem to have. A couple of observations I have on my writing are as follows. I write a lot about sports. In fact, I wish I wrote less about sports. Wait, I don't mean that. What I mean is that I wish I wrote more about what was going on in my life than writing about my teams all the time. I suppose that part of how I mark time are football, basketball, and baseball seasons past. That's all well and good, but the reason for starting this weblog was to document my time in college. Writing about sports is doing that to a certain extent, but as far as my day-to-day life goes, I'm really doing a poor job. The gold standard for my "day-to-day" entries is --and probably always will be-- Signing Off From 300 Williams. In 2005-2006, I feel like I failed to live up to that standard.
The other thing I've noticed about my writing is that my best work comes spontaneously. A lot of times I sit down to write on a certain topic, and I just don't like what comes out. It comes out too contrived, or too planned out, and I don't feel that I'm a good enough writer to make those entries worth reading. So, many of them never make it to this space. My best work comes when I sit down to write about a certain topic, and then get lost in something else. That's part of why I delayed writing this entry.
So, with those lessons learned, I hope to be able to say in March of 2007 that for the third year in a row my writing improved. Below are my favorite entries from 2005 and early 2006. I hope that my few remaining readers enjoy.
Despite my complaining about not writing enough about the day-to-day events of my life, I managed to have a few good entries in this category. Here's one about my life as an engineer, and it's a totally true story. Here's an entry that was originally supposed to be about Kansas Basketball and turned into a rant against organized labor. If you ever wanted to know the reason I don't eat at Panera, here it is. I think that I did an excellent job capturing my emotions before turning 21. Here's another true story that probably isn't surprising if you know me pretty well. It's always a big deal when I can say that my favorite sportswriter published me as his email of the week. And finally, does anybody else miss the dead bodies?
Here's the best of my sports entries. The Detroit Pistons get two entries, one on the Robert Horry game. The other is about Ben Wallace, which makes an appearance here only because I was dumb enough to say that I agreed with Snoop Jackson 50% of the time. I can honestly say that I've not read a single word he wrote since the Ben Wallace article. Considering I said that I had a soft spot for the Tigers when they were bad, nobody can call me a fairweather fan now that they're good. Michigan Football also gets two nods in this space. One for my sky is falling post, and another for the Penn State game. Duh. I would like to point out that in the "sky is falling" post, I complained about the offensive coaches not lining up Breaston and Manningham on the same side of the field. Apparently they took my advice to heart because Breaston sucked in the coverage away from Manningham on the game winning touchdown of the Penn State game. Go ahead, watch the video. Not just because I'm right, but because... well... just watch it again. Finally the Pittsburgh Steelers make 2 appearances on my favorite entries list. Here is my we're going to the Superbowl post. And finally, probably my favorite entry of the entire year, and to date my second favorite entry ever, the Superbowl Champions entry. I can't think of a better way to cap my second year of livejournaling.
As I started reading my work during my second year of livejournaling, I feel like my writing is much improved. I've had a hard time narrowing down my favorite entries. This is a nice problem to have. A couple of observations I have on my writing are as follows. I write a lot about sports. In fact, I wish I wrote less about sports. Wait, I don't mean that. What I mean is that I wish I wrote more about what was going on in my life than writing about my teams all the time. I suppose that part of how I mark time are football, basketball, and baseball seasons past. That's all well and good, but the reason for starting this weblog was to document my time in college. Writing about sports is doing that to a certain extent, but as far as my day-to-day life goes, I'm really doing a poor job. The gold standard for my "day-to-day" entries is --and probably always will be-- Signing Off From 300 Williams. In 2005-2006, I feel like I failed to live up to that standard.
The other thing I've noticed about my writing is that my best work comes spontaneously. A lot of times I sit down to write on a certain topic, and I just don't like what comes out. It comes out too contrived, or too planned out, and I don't feel that I'm a good enough writer to make those entries worth reading. So, many of them never make it to this space. My best work comes when I sit down to write about a certain topic, and then get lost in something else. That's part of why I delayed writing this entry.
So, with those lessons learned, I hope to be able to say in March of 2007 that for the third year in a row my writing improved. Below are my favorite entries from 2005 and early 2006. I hope that my few remaining readers enjoy.
Despite my complaining about not writing enough about the day-to-day events of my life, I managed to have a few good entries in this category. Here's one about my life as an engineer, and it's a totally true story. Here's an entry that was originally supposed to be about Kansas Basketball and turned into a rant against organized labor. If you ever wanted to know the reason I don't eat at Panera, here it is. I think that I did an excellent job capturing my emotions before turning 21. Here's another true story that probably isn't surprising if you know me pretty well. It's always a big deal when I can say that my favorite sportswriter published me as his email of the week. And finally, does anybody else miss the dead bodies?
Here's the best of my sports entries. The Detroit Pistons get two entries, one on the Robert Horry game. The other is about Ben Wallace, which makes an appearance here only because I was dumb enough to say that I agreed with Snoop Jackson 50% of the time. I can honestly say that I've not read a single word he wrote since the Ben Wallace article. Considering I said that I had a soft spot for the Tigers when they were bad, nobody can call me a fairweather fan now that they're good. Michigan Football also gets two nods in this space. One for my sky is falling post, and another for the Penn State game. Duh. I would like to point out that in the "sky is falling" post, I complained about the offensive coaches not lining up Breaston and Manningham on the same side of the field. Apparently they took my advice to heart because Breaston sucked in the coverage away from Manningham on the game winning touchdown of the Penn State game. Go ahead, watch the video. Not just because I'm right, but because... well... just watch it again. Finally the Pittsburgh Steelers make 2 appearances on my favorite entries list. Here is my we're going to the Superbowl post. And finally, probably my favorite entry of the entire year, and to date my second favorite entry ever, the Superbowl Champions entry. I can't think of a better way to cap my second year of livejournaling.