FIVE YEARS

(Listen to the soundtrack of this post.)

Five years ago, today, I made my first post to this blog.

Oddly enough, I’ve been a blogger longer than I’ve been a lot of things, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about blogging and what’s valuable about it, and why anybody should do it. This interview I did does a good job of covering that ground.

The most important point: I didn’t start a blog because I had something to say. I started a blog because I wanted to find something to say.

Bob Pollard, one of my favorite songwriters, his career started by making up album covers for bands that didn’t exist yet:

Back in high school, maybe 4 or 5 people wanted to be in a band, but nobody knew how to play an instrument. So in art class, we’d sit there and make album covers, and the credits, and I’d have the lyrics, and we’d have everything but music. We even made t-shirts for our band. Walked around, and people’d say, “You guys have a band?” “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a band!” And no one could play anything. So it started out as kind of a fantasy.

Lynda Barry says, “when you were a kid, you’d never write a book unless you had the book to write it in.”

The idea is that having a container can inspire you to fill it with art.

Whenever I’ve been creatively lost over the past five years, I’ve always come back to the blog, and asked myself, “What can I fill this with?” It’s kept me going, kept me making work.

Best of all, I’ve made really good friends, which, in the end, is the only reason to be here. So thanks, y’all.