Isn’t it a little ironic for an electronic journal to have a paper anniversary? Shouldn’t it be the Hyperlink anniversary or something? Yes, the Lightspeed Chronicles are a year old today.

A coworker asked me a while back what I get out of blogging, and it’s actually quite an interesting question. What’s the point of this?

I first read about blogging in shift magazine, and decided to check out some blogs. The things they spoke of, little vicissitudes of life, immediately made me want to comment, and eventually ramble on about things myself. I’d been looking for a creative outlet, and there it was. An outlet for daily catharsis. But it’s turned out to be much more.

It’s allowed me to keep in touch with faraway friends, notably in Belgium, Norway and Sweden. It’s given my parents a window into my life I don’t think they would have gotten otherwise. It’s allowed me to vent, decry, exchange, exhort, rant, rave, opine, as well as to get new perspectives, solutions and advice about a variety of issues. Last time I went to the Montreal bloggers meeting, Boris was telling me that in his blog, he sometimes dared more than in his life, but that eventually that some of that fearlessness had seeped into his actual life. I, on the other hand, felt that in blogging I was less than myself, as I often found myself blogging about little nothings while big somethings were going on in my life, but too personal to share in so public a medium. Either way, it says something about who we are.

When I announced that I was going to Venezuela in December, NY Times reporter Francisco Toro, from Caracas, wrote and offered to show me around while I was there. After doing the usual sniffing around to confirm that he wasn’t some freak, I replied. The situation in Venezuela ended up degenerating, I came back and we never did meet, but we’ve kept in touch and his blog on the situation down there keeps me up to date on a subject in which I’ve come to be interested.

Most importantly to me, I’ve made some good friends, and met some other very interesting people. I’m looking forward to meeting more still.

That’s what blogging has brought me, year one. I’m looking forward to seeing where the medium goes, where this particular blog goes, what new people and experiences it will bring to me.