And So it Began…

Posted on November 22, 2007March 20, 2017 by Matt Todd

Three years ago, I entered the blogosphere with these posts. MattDanTodd Land has definitely evolved over time and I’m pretty happy with the direction it has gone – although I’m sure there are times the readership gets tired of my IU ramblings, but that’s part of the charm, right?

I was inspired by a post at Video Church Blog about what bloggers got me to blog. Yes, whose fault is it that I joined the crazy world of blogging?

I can’t think of five bloggers who influenced me in the beginning. I really can’t. I don’t know of five blogs I visited on a regular basis before I jumped in. It all began in ’99 when I tried my hand at creating a web page. Having a personal website was all the rage. I tried to keep it up to date with thoughts about recent events – but it had become too time consuming. My interest slowly waned.

A few months into it, however, I received an email from some girl who had stumbled upon my site. She said she liked what I had created and it sounded like I would really enjoy ‘blogging.’ She referred me to a site and I checked it out. I thought ‘Blogging? Really? I think I’ll pass.’

And I did.

Fast-forward a few years. The page still existed but was rarely, if ever, updated. I did manage to post some thoughts about the IU football team when they won the Old Oaken Bucket and how I thought Mike Davis deserved a shot (boy, was I wrong – but that’s OK…his failure was my fault – remember?). I began visiting a site called The Ooze, and reading their blog. I also visited athleoalathea every two weeks or so. So this unknown girl, The Ooze, and athleoalathea kind of established the groundwork.

When I began at Emmanuel, I met milestogo (I’m the ‘really nice man from Evansville’ mentioned in this post – man, I had her fooled, didn’t I?) and jbalogna . And within a few months, I had jumped in with both feet. So that’s it. We all have anonymous girl, The Ooze, athleoalathea, milestogo, and jbalogna to thank for this world that is MattDanTodd Land!

So Now What?
With the advent of the Myspace and Facebook craze, I had debated moving my journal to one of those sites. More people. More traffic. Yadda, yadda, yadda. But after trying them out, I’ve realized that people really don’t comment on blog postings there nearly as often as they do here.

Then there’s the whole WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, etc. platforms that most ‘legitimate’ bloggers (whatever that means) apparently use. Yes, I like the functionality of them – you can add some cool features like widgets and stuff. But they all look the same. At least here on LiveJournal, you have some level of creativity available to you. In addition to that, I really like the functionality of the comments features here on LiveJournal. You can actually have a conversation and it will be emailed to you. That helps keep the conversation going, which is the point of a blog, isn’t it?

And on top of that, liztodd has encouraged me to keep the blog here. It has history here. I’m not really dissatisfied with it here. I don’t think I disagree with her. So, for the foreseeable future, MattDanTodd Land is here to stay. I’ve struggled with deciding what to post here and what to post on anakin_redeemed, but that will be figured out over time.

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Matt Todd

Howdy. I'm Matt. My wife, Christy, and I have four kids and two dogs, I'm passionate about orphan care. I'm a die-hard fan of the Evansville Aces, the Indiana Hoosiers, and Star Wars. I'm trying to live life by the Todd family motto: "It behooves us to live!"