Why blog?

We started our first blog in 2011. Blogs had been around for a decade or so and were still pretty popular because social media hadn’t gone crazy yet. Ann cooked her way through Cooking Wild in Missouri, much like Julie & Julia, and I tried to hunt and fish to support it. People loved the idea. We were interviewed by the Kansas City Star, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and a radio station. The blog was wildly popular for two years, and has about 200 posts. To date, it has earned us $14.43, but you don’t get paid until it hits $100, so we’ve got a ways to go. You can find it at https://woodstofood.blogspot.com/.

I started my next blog, Fred on Faith, in 2013 as a place to write my thoughts on scripture and spirituality that weren’t appropriate for work, or at least my work. I posted nine times in the first year, three times in the second year, and seven times in the 11 years since then. No one read this blog except my friend Flippo and my cousin Bob. You can read it at https://fredonfaith.blogspot.com/.

Koenig blogging fell silent for a bit, but then Oliver picked up the mantle, and he and his girlfriend Opal blogged about spending their summer working together at Yellowstone National Park. You can read it at https://asummerinyellowstone.blogspot.com/. The following year they spent the summer working Everglades National Park, and blogged about that at https://asummerintheeverglades.blogspot.com/. I found both of these to be the most compelling things I’ve ever read, but I may have some implicit bias.

I’m writing this blog now to let people back home know a little about what we’re up to, and it also serves as a place for me to look back and remember places we like to return to. My first blog was done in tandem with Ann. With this one, she is not even reading it. She’s gone old school, handwriting cards at night to people back home while I’m typing on the blog. We’re both working remote full-time, so having our personal writing time at the same time in the evening after work is over keeps us honest. And we've watched less than five hours of TV in the month that we've been gone. 

I think Ann handwriting letters is great, and I’m sure the recipients appreciate receiving them in the mail. I’m probably just too lazy to do that method, but I also have another excuse. I hand-wrote a lot of letters during basic training and AIT when I didn’t have any other access to communication, and also wrote a lot of letters seven years later when Ann and I were living in Africa. I wish I had those letters back, because I’d love to have an account of those times. It felt like I was keeping a journal at the time, but I was mailing it away, page by page, to different people. With the blog, I’ll be able to look back on it. 

Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just post on Facebook? My relationship status with Facebook is complicated. I created a lot of content to support Mark Zuckerberg. Without me (and a few billion other people) creating content, there would be no reason to look at Facebook, and Zuck would not get any ad revenue. I did all of this work for him pro bono. So how many times has he asked me to go hog hunting with him at his Hawaiian ranch? I’ll give you a clue: it rhymes with hero. So why should I keep writing and doing photography (the only two things I know how to do) for him for free? Thus, the blog. Blogger is owned by this little Mom and Pop shop called Google.