What a gorgeous day. The sun is out. It’s 19 degrees centigrade. (That’s 66 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you who home-school your children.) The camellia and magnolia are in bloom. My lawn is newly mowed. The birds and squirrels are chattering while the cats — all four of them — explore the ground below. (Max was amazed — amazed! to see that the back doors allowed him another way in and out of the house.)

I’ve dragged the card table and a couple folding chairs out here onto the porch, so that I can have a real and proper writing table. I’ve been puffing my pipe. I’ve been reading comic strips. I’ve been answering e-mail. In short: life is grand.

And soon Kris will return from Virginia, making things that much better.

Today marks this site’s sixth anniversary. I’d had a site before that, of course, and even an “online journal” (which is what we called them back before they were blogs, back when we coded them by hand). But it was six years ago today that I signed up at some place called Blogger and began my experiment with formalized writing for the web.

That first year was rocky. I didn’t post often. I posted typical “here’s what I ate for breakfast” entries. I worried about the upcoming Lord of the Rings films. (With some cause, as it turns out.) After Septemeber 11th, I went silent for a whole month as I tried to wrap my brain around it. Notable entries from year one:

• First Post
• Toward a Pastoral Lifestyle, in which I yearn for a simpler life
• The Joy of Napster
• Tintin is Dying, in which the Best Cat Ever has mere weeks to live
• Yurting, which describes an outing with Mac and Pam
• The Lure of Digital Photography
• Reconnecting, in which we meet with all the cousins for the first time in more than a decade
• Who Owns the Memories? Blogging is a new type of writing. What can be shared? What remains private?
• Best Hearts Game Ever &mash; in retrospect, this was the pinnacle of a particular period in my life, and this entry documents how much I enjoyed it
• TAG Science, a typical memory post

During the second year, I left Blogger, which at that time was too unstable and inflexible for my liking. I moved to a new platform called Movable Type. It was great! It lived on my own server and offered all sorts of flexibility. Notable posts from this period of 2002-2003 include:

• Frustrated, an entry more notable for what is not said than what is…
• U2: A Love Story
• Star Wars Generation, of which I am a member
• Pet Cemetery, in which I bury another cat and name the fellows he joines…
• Simon comes to live with us
• Animal Intelligence
• adhesive capsulitis — For what seemed like months (but was only days), I had “frozen shoulder”. This entry has become a place for others to gather and share their suffering.
• FC Saints, in which I play city league soccer with Mac, Pam, and Joel
• Herb Nelson is my favorite client ever. I also wrote about him in Herb Nelson and the Autogyro Airplane.
• I gave my spiritual history in Genesis, Exodus, and Revelations.
• Peter Jackson’s Helm’s Deep sucked.
• Beyond the Basics was a photography class I took with Mac
• I shared the recipe for the best clam chowder ever!
• Better Living Through Wireless opens with a very important (and expensive) moment in my life

In retrospect, this blog’s third year was its Golden Age. It had many readers, and they left many comments. I wrote about a lot of things (especially Proust). I had fun. I wrote about a high-school leadership camp. I met Dr. Comic Book Guy. I dreamed I met an old friend (while naked). I fell in love with the iTunes Music Store. Mac, Joel, and I played with a videophone. I meditated on the simplicity movement. I wrote about Dad. Twice. (That last entry is one of my favorites.) I had knee surgery. I went clam-digging. I entered the photo competition at the county fair. I went camping with Mac. I took a writing class from Rick Piet. I started reading the Patrick O’Brian books. (And managed to get me, Joel, and Dave kicked out of a Patrick O’Brian movie.) We endured an ice storm. We spent time in Yakima with Jeremy and Jennifer. I wrote about the malleability of time.

The fourth year began with a bang. I changed the layout to the form you see here today. This layout has served me well. I’ve tried to change it a couple of times, but always you folks have risen in revolt. This year was marked by a sudden change: we bought a new home. Some favorite entries include:

• The Giraffes are Insincere, in which Kris and I join the Gingeriches for a trip to the zoo. And spilled ups of hot chocolate.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spgmffft, in which we do not see a movie
• The cats were active during this fourth year. Toto interviewed me. Simon tasted the blood of a squirrel. They founded Catfight Club.
• I shared Action Girl’s Guide to Living and discussed the tyrrany of choice.
• I went hiking with Andrew, Craig, Tim, and Mac.
• We took an Alaskan cruise.
• I peed of the back porch.
• Proust made another appearance.
• I discovered World of Warcraft.

I retrieved a skunk from under the trailer house.

• I watched the new Battlestar Galactica.
• My camera was stolen, but Joel found it.

During this site’s fifth year, I discovered The Decemberists. I learned that Tuesday is Sno-Ball day. The cats shared a weekend at Rosings Park and were fascinated by a squirrel. I actually shared too much cat. I also shared the golden rules of weblogging. I struggled to get better sleep. My heart was melted by the gin fizz.

And, of course, I wrote the most important entry ever: Get Rich Slowly! Little did I know at the time that this one article would launch my career as a professional blogger. But it did. And it has.

In the fall of 2005, midway through the site’s fifth year, Movable Type died. It suddenly decided that I wasn’t allowed to access my blogs. Nobody could comment. This sucked. Hard. I was forced to start from scratch. Since that day, I’ve been moving old entries over to the new version of the site gradually, but there are still many that cannot accept comments.

The past eighteen months have been up-and-down for me here. I suffered some mild depression, which affected my writing. I started some new blogs, which affected my posting frequency. I tried to move this site to WordPress, but again you folks opposed the change.

Finally, last fall, I found and equilibrium, and since then I’ve tried to return to the same posting schedule and content I had before. I know I haven’t succeeded completely, but I’m trying. For the past few months — and for the forseeable future — my life is Get Rich Slowly, the blog. This is my future. Because I spend so much time at it, I don’t have as much time to live, which means I have less to write about here. But it won’t always be this way.

Check back in another six years. With any luck, foldedspace will be in an other golden age!

It’s been an unusual year for me. Instead of just dreaming, I’ve taken action. I’ve pursued something I love — writing — and I’ve made money at it. This is the year I became a professional blogger.

On the 4th of March, I took the first steps to “monetizing” my web sites. Since then, I have earned $9000 from blogging. In December alone, I earned $2327. These numbers probably shock some of you. They shock me. I had no idea that it was possible to make money from something I loved so much, and yet it’s not only possible to earn money from this, it’s likely that I could make this my full-time job.

I know that foldedspace suffered for several months, but I hope you all understand why I opted to pursue other priorities. I’ve made an effort to return to my old posting habits recently. I’m not back to my old pace yet, but I probably won’t ever return to that until I make the leap to full-time blogger. (Well, I already work full-time hours at this, but most of those are at night and on weekends. Here it is, New Years Eve, and I’ve already written three entries for the coming week.)

In past years, I’ve written capsule summaries of what has come before (2002, 2003). My life was full of statistics: books I’d read, movies I’d seen, and music I’d heard. I still generated plenty of stats to track my progress this year — could I do anything else? — but my focus shifted in a big way. Still, here are some comparitive numbers:

	2002	2003	2006
Books read	56	43	~40
Mariners games	4	0	0
Expensive toy	iBook	Gamecube	Wii
Photography expense	<$100	>$1000	$0!
Weight Dec. 31st	198	199	195
Weblog entries	203	329	214*
Weblog comments	232	2401	1754*

* These numbers are for foldedspace only. The numbers for all my active weblogs (some of which are more active than others):

Animal Intelligence: 30 posts, 23 comments
Get Rich Slowly: 670 posts, 4279 comments
Four Color Comics: 166 posts, 85 comments
Foldedspace: 214 posts, 1754 comments
Total: 1080 posts, 6141 comments

This has been a wonderful year. I feel fulfilled for the first time in ages. My Depression has receded to a background buzz. I attribute this to my newfound purpose in life, and to the assistance of Lauren Muney, my wellness coach. Lauren helped me to confront my self-destructive behavior, and to see that I could make smart choices. The change has been remarkable.

2006 hasn’t been without regrets, however. Kris and I spent less time with friends than in past years, and I feel the lack of companionship keenly. I’ll work to change this in 2007. Also, I feel like the house and yard are beginning ot show ragged edges. I want to spend a little more time maintaining the place. (I always feel this way in winter, though.)

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with foldedspace through the years. I know it’s probably been hard — the content here varies widely depending on my current obsession and my mood. Believe me, though, that it’s readers this worth the effort.

Happy new year and best wishes for 2007.

I’m taking ten days off to work on web sites. I’ve started with this one. You’ll be happy to hear that there are no major changes planned. Instead, I’m making small improvements that have been requested for a long time.

For example, I updated the ‘elsewhere’ links in the sidebar. More importantly, I doubled the number of images that rotate in the upper right corner. Lots more cats and kids, of course, but other shots as well. If your favorite isn’t there, please drop me a line.

Later (tonight? next week?) I’ll finally do something with the archives. They’re still the old archives from before the crash last year. None of the entries since then are accessible except through tedious manual slogging, paging back post-by-post.

If there are any enhancements you’d like to the site, now’s the time to speak up!

A friend once complained to me, “I don’t understand it. My boss is a jerk. How come every single boss I’ve ever had has been a jerk. What have I done to work at so many jobs where the boss is a jerk?” He’d worked at a lot of jobs.

I’d met some of his bosses. They weren’t jerks. The trouble wasn’t with my friend’s bosses — the trouble was with my friend.

You see, I have this theory: if you find that people are saying the same thing about you over and over again, there’s probably a grain of truth to it. If your friends all think you’re bossy, maybe you’re bossy. If your family thinks you’re too competitive, maybe you’re too competitive. Or — to take an example from my own life — if people complain that you only see things in black-and-white, maybe you’re not doing a good job of conveying your ability to see shades of grey.

All this is just a long and drawn-out way to say: I hear you. When all of my readers are saying the same thing, how can I not?

The truth is, I like this layout, too. It feels like home. I’m not fond of the architecture behind the scenes, but I just spent the past eight hours performing renovations. I upgraded Moveable Type to the latest version. I installed new spam protection. (I haven’t received a single piece of spam since doing so. More precisely, I’ve received 55 pieces of spam in the past 9 hours and 21 minutes, but the spamfilter has caught them all, even the goddamn Tramadol ads!) I took the time to funnel every single feed through Feedburner. (I think. If you read via feed and you’re not being routed to Feedburner, please let me know. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just ignore this.)

I even spent a couple hours creating a new front page. I think it’s pretty nifty. (I haven’t tested it on Windows yet. If you see anything obviously broken, please let me know ASAP.)

Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it. It helped me see the clear direction I needed to take.

Now I’ll see what I can do about adding more content to the site! (Starting with the flotch. It’s back!) One thing you’re going to see, though, are parallel postings. That is, I may post something at both Get Rich Slowly and foldedspace. Or at both Animal Intelligence and foldedspace. The stuff I parallel post will be “best of entries” of which I am particularly proud. It’ll save me a little effort and give you more to read!

Though this site hasn’t officially moved yet, you’ll find fresher content at http://www.foldedspace.org/ (new RSS feed).

The main entries will continue to be posted here, but all other content — including the flotch — is being routed to the new address. Note that the layout there is not final; I’m just using an out-of-the-box template.

I need your help.

Sometime in the future — though not for several months at the outside — I’m going to start a weblog about early American popular music. (Surprised? You shouldn’t be.)

I know that I want to call this weblog Happy Feet. It’s the name of an old song (mp3), and describes perfectly the vibe I’m hoping to achieve. However, all of the domains with any variation on “happy feet” or “happy foot” are already taken. What am I to do? Come to you for help!

Assuming that I still want to call this hypothetical site Happy Feet, then what domain ought I to register. Some possibilities include:

• happyfeets.org — I would probably then call the site “Happy Feets”, which would make my inner grammar Nazi wince
• happyfeetblog.org — an imperfect solution, but certainly viable
• or something completely different, such as oldtimemusic.org or publicdomainhits.org

Please, devoted readers, help me to choose the best option. No idea is too dumb! Let me hear your toughts! (But not the “oh good lord why is J.D. starting another weblog?” thoughts.)

I need your help. I’m looking for funny stories about money.

Blogathon 2006 is tomorrow, and I’ll be writing for 24-hours straight at Get Rich Slowly. My theme will be Funny Money. I’ll highlight stories and anecdotes and websites about money that are funny in some way. I mean both funny “ha-ha” and funny “strange”.

Examples include:

• The old lady who had three million dollars in cash, but who kept it strewn around her house (which was filled with cats), and who died living as a pauper, nobody aware of how much she was worth.
• The inept bank robbers in my neighborhood who stole construction equipment in an attempt to steal an ATM. (True story — I’ll have to see if I still have the newspaper article.)
• Urban legends.
• Video clips from YouTube.

This video clip from NBC’s The Office is an example of something that might work.

Because I’ve made this change of plans with less than 24 hours to go before Blogathon starts, I need your help. If you know of a strange money tale or a funny story, please let me know!

(Also: it’s not too late to pledge your support. I currently have 26 pledges totalling $558. Pledges as small as $1 are appreciated. The money will go to help provide books for poor children.)

Get Rich Slowly (my personal finance site) will be participating in the annual Blogathon on July 29th. Starting at 6am Pacific, I will post one entry every half hour for twenty-four hours.

Money raised from your sponsorships will be donated to First Book, an organization that fosters reading among low-income children.

First Book is a national nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books. We provide an ongoing supply of new books to children participating in community-based mentoring, tutoring, and family literacy programs.

[…]

First Book’s model is national in scope and local in impact. In our first year, First Book distributed approximately 12,000 books in three communities. Since that time, First Book has distributed more than 40 million books to children in over 1300 communities around the country.

Encouraging children to read is one of the most important things we can do to help them grow into productive adults. Reading starts kids down the path to success. It is the very first step toward getting rich slowly.

Sponsoring the site is easy. If you’d like to support First Book, simply pledge any amount — even a dollar. If you e-mail me after you pledge, I’ll add your name (and a link to any web site you choose) to the Get Rich Slowly sidebar. After the Blogathon, you will receive a reminder directing you to First Book to fulfill your pledge. And remember: you donations are tax deductible (at least in the United States).