Rock Back and Fire

In 101 minutes, 2009 will be here. The year 2009 will bring upon the 5th Anniversary of You're a Blog. Who feels old now? (Jamie Moyer, put your hand down.)

In the early days of YAB, my writing was constrained by many parameters. For one, I was leading a life that endured more repetition that your average episode of Scrubs. (Only with less life lessons set to the music of Jack Johnson or The Fray.) I had a regular office job, lived in a regular apartment, and drove a regular car in regular traffic. I rooted for above-average sports teams, shopped for a regular list of groceries on a regular basis, and had a regular sleep schedule where I slept regularly in the same place in my regular apartment every night.

Okay, scratch the last one.

In this blog's infancy, I aimed to be different despite all above the above regularities. And in most cases in this world, "difference" can be defined by an adherence to a bare minimum of rules and standards. And yet, it was the Rules and Standards that I set for YAB that forced my template for bringing the funny. Some of these rules included:

• Blogging on a daily basis, meaning every single weekday including the occasional "observed Monday" holiday.
• Missing one of these clearly defined blogging days results in working harder on a subsequent day, blogging multiple times.
• A complete refusal to report or blog about something that the news media has already done the work on. If you want to know what's going on in the world, read CNN.
  
• A complete refusal to achieve reader traffic by artificial means, such as e-mail blasting, linking to places for a free pingback, and skywriting. Oh, how I loathe the skywriting.
• Posts must be at least 500 words. You know, because verbosity is the soul of wit.
  
• Always strive to be funny.
• Always strive to not be not funny.

You see how complex I made being "different?" With these many rules, I could probably put together an excellent romantic comedy script for the likes of Greg Kinnear and Sandra Bullock by now.

So now, a mere 92 minutes before 2009 is upon us, I've decided to return. What caused this? Bad Chinese?

(I'm no racist.)

You can attribute this second coming to two people, whether they know it or not. Let's review their casefiles. (Fictitious middle names have been added to protect the innocent.)

1. Robert Eugene Rockhound Harford - Of all the people who I led out of the darkness and into the blogging world, Rob has been the closest mirror image I've had. I'm sure somewhere in my archives I can pull that national anthem I wrote for his blog as proof. The nice thing about Rob is he never forgets. Whether it's a subtle jab at my inactivity or an incessant thirst for some Hi-8 videotape I have buried in a box from a 2003 camping trip, he remembers. He could be an almanac, you know, if almanacs had calves the size of whole chickens.
   
2. Frances Santana Moss Reynolds - (heck, just using her real first name has rendered her anonymous) It may have been a simple compliment at a Christmas party, but it meant more than you know. Thanks for reading.

So here we are. 83 minutes from an epic match between a giant crystal ball and gravity and I'm giving it another run. Gone are many of the rules that led to this blog's crushing demise. Here to stay are some new...guidelines.

• Any time your color scheme matched that of an 0-16 football team, it's time to tweak.
• I'll leave the Daily gig to Jon Stewart. Be prepared for exciting bouts of sporadic regularity!
• I can't believe what I'm about to type: PROPER TIME AND DATE STAMPING.
• Crossposting to Facebook, so random classmates from middle school can be in the know.
• Did I mention the PROPER TIME and DATE STAMPING?

You know why Phillies' pitcher Brett Myers was so effective in the playoffs after a tumultuous season that saw him eating on a Triple-A per diem in July? He stopped thinking about how to pitch and what he had to do with each and every pitch. He stopped adhering to rules. He rocked back and fired.

Not a bad mantra for 2009. This is going to be fun.