five years of the different drummer soundtrack

16 Qawl 167 B.E. (Baha’i Calendar)
Soundtrack in my head: The Pretenders “2000 Miles”

Five years ago tonight I posted my first little post on this new blog called The Different Drummer Soundtrack.  It was a very brief and rather silly little post where I likened working with my new blog and website to hijacking an alien space ship, and not being very sure how to drive it.  Half a decade later, this “space ship” and I have taken a rather amazing journey. 

I started writing this new blog because I felt like I had something to say, and a unique perspective to offer.  My perspective has changed and evolved over the years.  One of the main purposes for starting this blog was to talk about my positive experiences with a religion I belonged to, but instead, I left that religion nearly two years later, and threw their so-called holy object to the bottom of Lake Mendota.  I chronicled my discovery and rediscovery of the Baha’i Faith and then finally announced my declaration as a Baha’i on November 19, 2007. I intend to continue writing about my experiences as a Baha’i. 

The other reason for starting this website was to talk about co-op life.  When I first moved into a co-op house in December 2002, I was not quite sure how long I would keep up this lifestyle, but eight years later, my dedication to it is only stronger and I continue to chronicle it.

During the past five years, I lost my mother to cancer, began DJ’ing, turned 40, moved from a co-op house in downtown Madison to a family-friendly one in a quieter neighborhood, and now serve, in essence, as an uncle to a nine-year old and two two-year olds.  I’ve promoted the cause of Net Neutrality, criticized the treatment of a former astronaut by the media and the blogosphere, twice wrote thirty posts in thirty days, geeked out on the Baha’i Calendar, written about the seasons which never cease to amaze me, and posted the names of a number of songs that were going through my head. 

I want to give a shout-out to Squarespace, which has been the host of this website all five years. When I was thinking about where I wanted to post my blog, I looked hard for a service that would give me maximum control over the design and layout of the website.  I knew I’d be paying a little bit of money anyway because of my desire to have my own URL (especially since it ended up being quite a find IMHO), but it’s not much more than what I would pay to use my URL and have it hosted on a server.  A lot of people have raved about WordPress in recent years. I tried using it earlier this year for another project, and with the improvements they’ve made I can see why some people like it–but compared to Squarespace, I find WordPress to be quite clunky, inflexible, and not very intuitive.  I personally don’t know anybody else who uses Squarespace, but I would highly recommend it.

I’ve come a long way, which is why the above song selection seems appropriate–not only was it the first “soundtrack in my head,” on this blog, but it feels like I have traveled 2000 miles from where I was five years ago.