Looking Back as 20th Anniversary of Blogging Approaches

The overhaul of my website was just about complete, including an overdue new profile picture and cover photo that I’m quite happy with. It’s no small feat to get a good picture of yours truly smiling on que thanks to cerebral palsy. So, I started thinking about writing a new bio as a finishing touch.

And I kept thinking about it.

And thinking about it.

Blogger gives me 1,200 characters to write an “introduction.” It’s actually fairly generous. Though LinkedIn offers 2,600 for an “About” section, Twitter offers a mere 160, Instagram 150, and Facebook prompts you to “Describe who you are” in 101 characters.

Social media bios became a quick list of links to my books, sports blog, and, because I don’t really know what else to call it, my “Rob J. Quinn” blog.

Yet, thinking about writing a new bio became a bit of a useful exercise.

Obviously, I’m not really summing up my life in 1,200 characters. I’m not even summing up my professional life – although that would be pretty easy with 1,200 characters.

But I started thinking about what to write. What to focus on. The books? The blogs? What do I want to do in the future? I also started thinking about how long I’d been blogging.

I remembered that I started blogging at the end of 2004, but I wanted to make sure of it. So, I dug out my “Writing Notebook” files with posts from old blogs stored on my external drive. (Keep paying annually for extra storage, I’ll take my hardware . . . until they make it incompatible with computers.)

I just found the files as I write, but I’m already surprised by some of what I’ve found – including how quickly I started trying to pick games against the spread. I didn’t remember that affiliate selling was part of the plan from the very beginning. And there were one or two more name changes than I recalled.

I’ve found a few posts where I tried on the “shock jock” hat as a blogger. It never quite fit me, although it led to two of my most popular posts. I used to write a good bit about sports talk in Philadelphia, at times offering my opinion on the hosts. The posts always did well. Anthony Gargano was a sports talker who I thought particularly sucked on the air, and I said so. The post was quite successful. By coincidence, I was offered a podcast interview years later with someone else at the same station. I thought for sure someone would find the post and I deleted it. Prudent or wussy? I’m going with wussy.

The other post came about after I had received messages from a couple friends telling me about people who pretend to be disabled. Yes, you read that properly. After reading more about it and seeing a daytime show that had one of these people on, I was furious. I laid into these people. Somehow, I saw the name of the guy who claimed to have created the so-called “identity” on a listserv. I questioned having him on the list, and eventually shared my post. Hits soared. So did criticism of me. I was literally called a bigot on Twitter by, I think, the same guy. The computer screen can often feel like my window to the world. When that window is showing you a bunch of people calling you some horrible names, it can be intimidating. Yet, I regret deleting the post.

I’ve found at least one good “Top 5” post that I wrote – it was on memorable sitcom endings. Plenty of reviews of books, movies, and even music, have been uncovered. I came across my #WePush2 hashtag intended to start a conversation among people with disabilities about exercise. “Tweeting” from the blog was an interesting experiment. So far, I can’t find the post about Brandon Graham of the Philadelphia Eagles coming at me on Twitter for being a blogger when I dared to ask him questions at the end of the NFL lockout years ago.

Twenty years of blogging, albeit with some breaks, deserves some recognition. So, I’m thinking there is some retro Rob coming to this blog soon as the anniversary of my first post does, in fact, approach later this year.

Lately, I’ve been feeling that I haven’t been aggressive enough as a writer. As you just read, I haven’t been strong enough in my convictions. I still struggle to just let it rip. Hell, it took me 18 years just to say “fuck” in a post. And, trust me, I say fuck a lot. At times, writing fiction, which isn’t getting published days or sometimes hours after I write it, I still struggle to let loose.

The truth is I haven’t been aggressive enough in a lot of aspects of my life – career, physical therapy, socializing, relationships with women.

But I’m not dead yet. I actually feel more content with what I’m doing than I have in years. I’ve been loving doing my sports blog again, especially with a few guys getting in the comments. The back-and-forth is what makes it fun. I’d love to hear from readers on this blog. Someone told me that my recent article on being bullied in school could be published in a magazine. I was happy to get the compliment, and I think the article is right where it belongs – on my site.

So, stay tuned. It might be fun looking back as I approach the 20^th anniversary of my first blog post. And hopefully the next however many years I got left will be a fucking blast.

As for that bio, maybe . . .

Writer, blogger, gambler, and still figurin’ it all out.