the two things we celebrate today

First and foremost, July 4th is American Independence Day, so Happy Fourth to all my fellow Americans. I'll be celebrating by doing laundry, eating some burgers and dogs, and pondering the many reasons I have to be thankful for living in America.

Second, we celebrate this blog's eighth birthday. That's right: I established this blog back on July 4, 2003, when I was having a lonely Fourth in a noisy PC-bang (Net cafe) on Korea University's campus. Can't say that the blog has improved much since that time; it remains as meandering as it ever was, and I pretty much abandoned the blog for a year during my mother's illness, which means I've lost over half the meager readership I used to have.

But the point of this blog has never been to attract millions of followers. If anything, it's been a place to think out loud, to vent, and to generate material that might end up in books. By that standard, the blog has been exactly what I've wanted it to be, and I see little reason to change the way I run things.

So Happy Birthday, America, and here's to another eight years of blogging.


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