mjochim.com: ONE YEAR ON

It was just one year ago today — June 6, 2004 — that I registered the mjochim.com domain and began building my new website.  Although I'd had a minor Web presence on my old Angelfire site, I set out to have this one reflect something of all of my varied interests.  The problem is that I have too many things I'm interested in.

None of my personal sites were ever intended to have much of an outside audience, being designed primarily for my family and a few close friends to keep tabs on my activities.  A secondary purpose was to archive material I'd collected over the years before it was destroyed or lost forever (one example:  my extensive collection of newspaper clippings and gig flyers for several Kansas City-based local music groups — I still have an awful lot of scanning and uploading to do!).  It still seems inconceivable to me that the homepage has received almost 4900 hits (it doesn't count mine unless I restart my computer between visits) in the 364 days since I added the counter!  (And that's not counting those who enter other sections of the site without ever comeing to the homepage.)

Working on the website — and this blog — was always in addition to my offline life.  At times, however, both have seemed like full-time jobs.

Unfortunately, due to changes in my life in these most recent months, many of my online projects — including completing existing sections and adding new ones to the site — have had to (temporarily) fall by the wayside.  I do plan to return to them as time permits, but at this point I simply do not know when that will be.  Yes, the various sections of my personal site are woefully incomplete and on-hold, just as my activities on numerous message boards and mailing lists have slowed to a standstill recently.

I have accomplished a great deal in the past year of mjochim.com at least in terms of providing an online "outline" of some of what I eventually want to include.  Looking around at the site, it has a certain haphazard feel to me — often I would work on a particular section as the mood struck me and often I wouldn't feel like working on certain sections my friends most wanted me to complete.  Someday....

In many ways, it seems like this blog has supplanted the parent site.  When the mood strikes me, I'm able to write about whatever I want to write about without trying to fit those writings into some easily-defined category.  I like to think that I can use some of these blog entries as templates for future additions to the website.  We'll see...

As far as my other current online activities, they have slowed down considerably.  Other than checking my e-mail several times daily (when AT&T has their act together), I spend a little time checking for new BitTorrent downloads and posting "thank you" notices for those seeds.  I spend a little more time searching for books, etc. on Amazon.com or eBay (but don't currently have any auctions of my own in progress).  Other computer activities such as audio & video editing have been non-existent recently, although I burn CD's and DVD's for various trading vines as those arrive in the mail.

I also have a special "pet project" I've been working on from time to time, suggested by members of a couple of Yahoo groups that I belong too.  But more on that in another post — once I'm farther along on that undertaking.

At lot has happened in one year — and I'm proud of most of what I've accomplished.  It will be interesting to see if I can complete much of what I began in the next year.  Somehow it seems appropriate that the site began on the anniversary of D-Day in that I often feel a similar uphill battle to accomplish all I've set out to do with it.  Somewhat like the invasion of Normandy, it will take some considerable planning (and no small amount of inspiration) to move forward once again.

As soon as I can, I will.