A year ago I embarked on a bright journey of blogging for a better tomorrow. I was full of the hope that I would change the world.

As usual, I was wrong.

I didn't really think I would change the world. I've been too cynical for too long for idealistic hubris to have much traction in my jaded mind. Yet I've been surprised that blogging has indeed changed my life.

I've found a community of like-minded people among the blogs I frequent. They are brilliant, funny, insightful, and politically astute. Not always all at the same time, but still... I find such rich commentary on blogs that I rarely turn to mainstream sources for it. There comes a point now where I can quickly predict the exchange of opinions in the MSM. The predicability indicates an utter lack of originality of perspective. We can't abide with that lack any more.

The best gift I've gotten from blogging is an indisputable improvement in my writing over time. In a sense, I've grown into the title of my blog. My writing-as-oratory theme has evolved into a fairly strong personal writing voice. I'm not always as focused as I would like but I'm still quite happy with my progress over the year.

Thanks also go out to you, my dear reader, for attending to my humble ranting and screeds of awful pomposity. My egoism is clearly evident yet I hope it is leavened by humor and the occasional bon mot. Oscar Wilde isn't really my patron but I admit to copping some of his attitude if nothing else.

So happy birthday to DemiOrator. No gifts, please! You're my guests. However, destroying the US/global military-industrial complex would be nice gesture of friendship and respect. If it's not too much trouble. Thanks.

[Addenda: FYI, the Blogger dashboard informs me that this is post #630 for this blog. How the hell did I post 630 times? Don't I have a life? Also, I prematurely went over some of this retrospective territory in a post earlier this month called Blog's Progress. That post has somewhat different information in it.]