They say that history repeats itself. I guess I'm now at that age where I start to see patterns play out. Life goes around in circles... or maybe it's a downward spiral?
I sat in a class today, surrounded by a majority of young folk. I'd call them kids, but I'm sure they don't like being called that. But most of them are young enough to be my kids. In fact, many are younger than my kids. But thankfully, despite my age, I am early Gen X, I haven't yet been mislabeled a Boomer. At least I've got that going for me.
In this class, our teacher, Kevin, told us that for the "Develop and Extend Critical and Creative Thinking Skills" unit that we are doing as part of the TAFE Screen & Media course, we are to do a blog. This gave me a flashback to the late 1990s, when I started my first blog. Anyone remember Geocities? We used to call them "web logs" back then. Which was later shortened to "blog".
This was long before "making money from blogging" was a thing. Those blogging were doing so purely for the pleasure. And it wasn't a word used in the mainstream. It would be a few more years before I heard the word mentioned in television news. I remember being pretty excited about it at the time.
2000 I would see myself at this very same campus I am now, also as a student. The course was "Digital Arts & Media". It would later be called "Interactive Digital Media". In 2012 I would return to the same campus, as a teacher. Here I am again, 9 years later, as a student. I'll probably explain how that came about in a later blog post. Stick around.
Kevin played us a part of a video, an interview with Seth Godin. A famously known blogger, published author, entrepreneur and multi-millionaire. Seth sold his company Yoyodyne to Yahoo for $30 million back in 1998.
Now I know Seth. Well, I have never met him. But in a way, I worked for him. From 2005 until 2011.
Seth started a publishing platform called Squidoo in 2005. It allowed writers to become published authors. Of articles. I'll expand on that too, in a future blog post.
What's important, for me at least, is that the reason why I am publishing this blog on this website is that Premium Dad Jokes was started by myself and my business partner Sam, and we "met" each other back in 2005 through Squidoo. There was a community forum attached to the site which allowed the authors, known as Lensmasters, to connect, share and socialise. I was the forum moderator. There was a point where the popularity of the site and the forum required a team of moderators, but for a while, I was The Forum Moderator.
For the purposes of several learning outcomes, I "have" to do this new blog, as opposed to the other nonsense one we already have had running on this site since November last year. But if there's learning to be had, and fun while doing it, I'm in feet first for a new adventure.
This blog will have more mindless meanderings, personal experiences, crazy ideas, and recounting interactions with interesting people I have met over the years and strange situations I have found myself in.
Ultimately if anyone can be blamed for what happens here, it will be Kevin. He lit the fuse.
PS: Sam came up with both the blog name and post title. Trust me, they're both far less ridiculous than what I would have come out with.
