About This Blog

Image via Wikipedia

This blog breaks one of the biggest cardinal rules of blogging; it doesn't just deal with one topic. That's what they tell you to do when you start blogging; pick a topic and focus in on it like a laser. When I first started blogging, that's what I did, focusing almost solely on politics on AOL Journals.

I also tried the bit about focusing on one topic when I left AOL and started blogging here on Blogspot. At "sotto voce USA" it was blogging politics all over again.  Then I decided I wanted to write about other topics as well. I started a now defunct sports blog, and a Civil War blog, and a photo journal. 

Since I'm barely motivated enough to maintain one blog on a consistent basis, you can imagine what a chore it was to manage four.  Then I started blogging about politics with a bunch of other AOL journeymen at "The Blue Voice."  By the way, that's still an ongoing concern and I still contribute to it on a much too infrequent basis.  The group blog confused things by robbing my main blog, the first one, of its focus...politics.

During a long Internet layoff, I decided to start anew and consolidate everything here.  So here it is: a blog that encompasses almost everything I'm interested in.  I've always been interested in politics to one degree or another.  I've been pretty apathetic about it of late, but occasionally get motivated enough to offer my two cents about one thing or another and usually cross-post anything political at "The Blue Voice."  I became interested in the Civil War from spending most of my life in the Chattanooga area where a good chunk of it actually happened.  I've been a sports fan all my life...also to varying degrees at different times.  I used to watch almost anything that was on, even Australian Rules Football when that was all I could get.  I'm more selective these days, focusing mainly on NASCAR, SEC football, and the Braves, Falcons, and Titans (and mainly in that order).  I've also had an on-again-off-again affair with photography over the years. 

So its all here -- all the stuff that I like to blog about.  Pick a topic on the sidebar to the right or start at the top and read straight down.  Whatever.  That's what I'm here for.  Keep in mind that a lot of the topics to the right take you to series of posts that are sometimes works in progress.

I made the blog's domain name fdtate.blogspot.com because I didn't want the domain name to be the title.  I envisioned changing the blog's title from time to time just to shake things up a bit.  I've changed names exactly once.  This blog was originally called "life...the universe (and everything)," a title borrowed from Douglas Adams and indicating the wide range of topics that would be here.  After another long Internet layoff, I sorta did a system reboot -- changing the template and changing the title to "Meanwhile..."  I saw it as akin to Monty Python's "and now for something completely different" line.  As in, the last post was about the Civil War, meanwhile here's something else.

I've probably told you most of this stuff before...mostly in the first post back in September of 2007.  It just seems appropriate to refresh the mission statement from time to time.