XIV

Hello. One of the general rules of Nobody in Particular is that it's not about me, directly. That is, this isn't an online diary. I'm a fairly boring person, and no-one wants to read about me. That said, I'm Aaron, and I live in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington... on the off chance that the pictures of the Space Needle and Seattle at night didn't clue you in.

I started this blog fourteen years ago, more or less today. The date's the same, in any event, but it was late on a Friday, back then. This was one of those things that had been kicking around in my brain for a few years before I actually got around to doing it. The original concept was going to be called The Help Files; I'd envisioned it as an online advice column. But I never did anything with the concept. A trip to London in 2004 gave me another idea: explaining the United States to people outside of it. President George W. Bush had just been elected to a second term, and people I met on the Tube or on the bus had questions. And I enjoyed answering them, so I thought it might make for a good topic. But I hadn't thought it out all that well... like where my initial set of questions was going to come from.

In any event, I kept talking about it, until one day, someone told me to shut up, and just do it. And so I did. The original concept, as laid out in the original post, was to talk about the interesting things that went on around me. But that would require me to get out and around more than I do, so I often simply post about things that I encounter in the news or in other locations around the Web. And that's really about it. Welcome to the page, and feel free to leave a comment, if you'd like. If you have a question about something, feel free to ask, if it's a topic, it might be interesting to run it down and write something up on it. The initial goal had been weekly updates, which quickly changed to thirteen posts per month. (That being the number of posts that went up in the first full calendar month of the blog.) I figured that I would have burned out by now, but I should hit 2,500 posts by spring.

Overall, Nobody In Particular is disconnected from the rest of the "blogosphere;" it's not part of any larger circle of blogs, and it doesn't have one of the popular themes. I'm not a "daddy blogger" or a food blogger or a travel blogger or anything like that. Whatever crosses my mind becomes the topic of the day. A lot of times it's something that grates on me in some way or another; I'm something of a critic of the world at large.

But, before I forget. Thank you very much for reading. If you're a regular, I appreciate you making the time to check in, and if you're new, welcome. I hope that you find it interesting. And yes, I do still use the term "weblog" from time to time.