A Fabulous Mess

I started blogging in 2005 because that was a big year for me. I remember starting to write right around the time I got accepted to nursing school, and shortly after I started classes, I moved out of my mom’s house. 2005 has thus far been the biggest year of my life in that a lot of things changed for the better and it started me on my way to the next phase of my life.

I originally started writing on BlogCity because it was free and there were a lot of ways that I could format it. I used to change my layout on a daily basis, and a part of me does miss being able to do that. Initially, I had these ideas of total global popularity and did everything that Google told me to promote my blog.

That is how I found the Pittsburgh Bloggers and subsequently met Woy.

My acceptance to the Pittsburgh Bloggers website was a happy day for me, and Woy and I developed an email/IM relationship. Shortly after, he showed up at Jack’s one day after my Pharm final because he knew I would be there. It was my first of 3 experiences meeting an internet friend in real life, and the initial weirdness of “Oh my God, that dude is from my internet life” soon went away. He celebrated with me when I found out that I passed, and thus began the real life friendship of Jen and Woy.

Woy is responsible for moving me to my own dot com and still does all the technical stuff for this site, as he does for a few other Pittsburgh Bloggers. He’s basically the driving force behind making Pittsburgh blogging what it is, and it is something kind of special. Even if you don’t know the face behind the blog, there’s a weird bond that bloggers have, which was evident to me when I went to the one Blogfest I attended. Even if I don’t know who is writing what I’m reading, there’s an investment you make in someone’s life when you commit to reading their blog, when you go as far as to link to them and add them to your Google reader. And when you get a lot of these people in one room with the only thing you have in common being you’re all bloggers from Pittsburgh, you find out how much these people really know about you. It’s shocking at first because I personally assume that no one’s reading this anymore.

I’ve hung out with Woy randomly by accident and a few times on purpose, and to this day, he remains the only person to ever interview me about anything. I felt like a celebrity that day. He and his wonderful wife also attended the concert that my school organized for a cancer benefit. And he was the only person I knew would be jealous when I said the words “Ha ha, I met Julie Gong and Buckner and you didn’t!”. He’s basically an all around good dude who has been a part of my life as long as this blog has, and this blog wouldn’t be what it is or will become without help from Woy. I needed a way to chronical the way things were changing, I needed an outlet for all the craziness that was going on in my life. And Woy helped me acheive that.

Woy and Mrs. Woy just welcomed their first baby into the world, and I wanted to say congratulations. At first I was going to text him, but I figured that was a bit too impersonal and that he was a bit too busy. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken on the phone because most of our communication has been electronically. Yes, a blog post may appear to be a bit impersonal, but this blog is an important part of my life and it’s a part that Woy helped me get.

Mike, congratulations to you, your wife, and your new little girl. You’re going to make an amazing father because, quite frankly, you are one of the nicest, most sincere and driven men I’ve ever met in my entire life.

I’m excited and happy for you, my friend.

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