Two Fiddy

Hey there. Sorry for the slight delay between posts. It’s been a relatively busy month full of both disappointments and things that have me extremely excited for what is to come. I’ve wanted to give this post the time and attention that it needed. It is a milestone, after all.

If you had told me a decade ago that I would have a blog with 250 posts and thousands of page views, I probably would have believed you, but I would have had no idea where this would have taken me. Allow me to indulge you in a bit of a history lesson.

By the time I started blogging, I was no stranger to writing on the internet. I had a fairly successful webpage called Inside the Mind of Jakob Duehr that I updated on a weekly basis. After doing that for over a year, I began to burn out and quickly found myself devoid of new and exciting ideas. I wanted to keep writing but in smaller and more measured doses.

One thing that most people don’t know is that my blog has actually moved a number of times. My original blog was located on Xanga (remember when that was a thing) before migrating to MySpace and LiveJournal. I finally consolidated all my old posts and imported each of them to Blogger, and that is where my writing has lived since 2008.

Sometimes people ask me “Why do you write?” Though that may seem like a simple question, it does not elicit a simple response. I write because I’m not the most boisterous person in the world. I’ve never believed that the world HAS to hear what I have to say, but I believe that I should make my thoughts and the lessons I have learned available to anyone who is interested in reading them. At my heart, I am a teacher, and I would love nothing more than for others to learn from the mistakes I have made so that they do not have to experience some of the discomforts I have. Sometimes we rise by stepping on the backs of others who have made the same mistakes we were about to make. I have no problem helping others rise. I write because I believe in the power of the written word, much as I believe in the power of the spoken word. Some things gain a greater degree of poignancy when they are written.

I am grateful that I decided to start writing because my blog has served as a veritable snapshot of my life over the course of the past decade. It is both amusing and humbling to go back and read old posts. Sometimes I feel a great sense of pride in all that I have accomplished and overcome, while other times I am frustrated because I find myself making some of the same mistakes I made long ago. I am fortunate to have tangible proof of where I was and where I now am. I can only hope that those things will guide me to where I want to be.

There have been so many blessings that have come as a result of this blog. I have cultivated friendships with members of a number of bands that I listen to thanks to what I have written about them. I got back in touch with so many of you this past spring during the “You Are the Story I Tell” series. It was so humbling and inspiring to know that I’ve impacted many of you in a small way, especially considering how integral you have been to making me the man I am today. I have learned so much about myself through writing, and I thank you for actually taking the time to read what I have to say.

So what does the future hold for me and this blog? Do I have another 250 posts in me? I’d like to think so. Who knows where my life will lead and what it will give to me, but I certainly plan to keep writing. At some point, I’m going to finish writing my book. Thank you for reading, and thank you for inspiring me to continue to write. You are the stories I have told, and you are the stories I will continue to tell.