Rule 91 -
The Sheepdog's very first blog post hit the blogosphere on July 4, 2009. Since then, 744 more posts, including this one, have landed here and, as of today, they've been viewed over 318,000 times. Not bad for an amateur.
Back in December 2017, I announced I was retiring this blog (here). Then, 4 months later, I did my best Brett Favre imitation and un-retired it (here).
Over the years of writing this blog, whenever I've had a technical issue, Google customer service and assistance have been nonexistent. Plus, Zemanta, which I relied on, went away a few years ago, and now it's the Feedburner emails' turn, apparently. There's been numerous helpful widgets also go away during the blog's tenure. It's gotten frustrating, but since Blogger is free, Google has no incentive to make it a priority. I get that, and I'm ok with it. It's Google's platform - they can do with it as they wish.
I've considered moving the blog to a different platform, such as Wordpress, but building a blog is a ton of work, and I'm honestly just not interested in doing it a 2nd time. So, with the latest notice from Google, I've come full circle to where I was in December 2017 - it's time to, in accordance with Gibbs' Rule 91, walk away and not look back. No Brett Favre-ing this time. My blogging career is over.
I'm eternally grateful to everyone who has faithfully supported this endeavor by reading, commenting, and providing input during it's lifetime. Some of you are family, some are friends, and some are fellow transplant recipients. Others are people I met through politics and advocacy for organ and tissue donation.
A few others provided technical support 12 years ago that was vital in taking an idea and turning it into this reality. As I'm sure they'd rather remain anonymous, I'll only mention them by their initials here - AC & EE - thank you! This site never would've existed without you.
There are things in the blog's history that I'm proud of and others that I'm not. If I could do it all over, most of the political posts would have never been written. I wish I'd spent more time writing about organ and tissue donation advocacy than that garbage. I wish the only political posts written would've been ones concerning legislation about organ and tissue donation. Politics as a whole is evil and destroying our country. Hatefulness, fighting, and arguing are at pandemic levels. All any of it does is fan the flames of division, and the political posts I wrote did a lot of fanning. I regret them tremendously.
In fact, in full disclosure - over the last 15 months during the pandemic, I've had a few such posts written and was ready to click "Publish". Only thing missing was a final review and the inclusion of a picture. What I was gonna say in those posts needed to be said. No one else was saying it, but I realized those posts wouldn't change anything or anyone's mind but would just be more "flame-fanning". So, even though I'd spent hours writing them, I deleted them and held my tongue. Perhaps some others out there should try doing the same. Just because you have "free speech" and can say something, it doesn't necessarily mean you should.
Probably, the funnest posts were the Music Mondays. Those brought back a lot of good memories and often helped kickstart my week. I hope my readers enjoyed reading them as much as I did writing them.
I'm now 14+ years out from my heart transplant. I'm grateful every day for the additional time I've been given. I'm still doing great, and I think about my donor every day. He will forever be my hero.
If you're not registered as an organ and tissue donor, please do so. Americans are still suffering and dying every day. One day you could be someone's hero, just like Kent (pic - above left) was for me.
Thanks again everyone for spending some of your valuable time reading my blog these last 12 years. I truly hope you enjoyed it. May God bless you all.
