Pittsburgh Homes Daily

I am alive.

Not just alive in the physical sense that I am breathing - I figure most of you probably guessed that - but ALIVE - that I am enjoying the twists and turns of life and excited about the future.

It has been almost a year since I’ve written an article for Pittsburgh Homes Daily - and I have to say that there wasn’t a point in time during the last year where I stopped and thought, “Gee, I wish I were blogging right now.” That’s not to say that I wasn’t ever tempted to check my feed reader or my email, but for the most part I resisted. Only on very rare occasions did I wade through the monstrosity of spam that had accumulated (in both the feed and the email) - to pop my head out of the hole for a little while and take a look around before scurrying back underground.

Why did I stop? The best answer is personal and professional reasons. I’m now employed in Philadelphia - and to some extent - it was just necessary to put my brief time in Pittsburgh behind me. And with “the plan” changing, it wasn’t as clear why I was blogging. Oh yeah - and the 70+ hours a week I was working required some changes in my outside activities.

Why not let Pittsburgh Homes Daily go - to another blogger, or shut it down? I’ve thought alot about that recently. I received an email in March that *almost* had me respond and offer to let the individual run Pittsburgh Homes Daily. I’ve been thinking about my plans for Pittsburgh Homes Daily even more now that PHD is coming up on its second birthday - May 10th, 2006 was the first post.

Back in October 2006, I responded to a question from Zillow about why I am blogging - and after 9 months of reflection I have to provide the same answer as to why I am going to start blogging on Pittsburgh Homes Daily again. I miss the intellectual exercise of reading the news and other posts, and coming up with something valuable to say that will be semi-permanently recorded. I miss seeing positive change in Pittsburgh, even though a source that will remain unnamed here seem to think that the air quality is lacking. I miss involvement in the real estate community - and watching the online real estate space flourish. And I miss messing around online.

To some extent, this is my online diary, and for 9 months it’s been locked in a drawer. I think it’s time to find the key.

Housekeeping:

You’ll notice that I’ve changed the theme. I adopted Cutline a little over a year ago and it just seems like a good time for some new clothes. I’m not totally happy with it - so you’ll probably see a few changes over the next couple months as I settle in to a new theme. One that attempts to compensate me for the time involved but doesn’t interfere with the user experience.

At one time or another, I swapped links with a few of the people on my blogroll. I’ll be going through it, and unfortunately, some of you may get dropped. Hopefully, by now, you are established and don’t really need the link. And I’m sure that I’ll find a way to link back to you in other ways. I think I have always been a generous linker.

I’ll be wading through the comments soon and approving old ones. Also fixing the feed so that it points to the right location. And I’ll think about updating the list of blogs - after I’ve put some effort into building this thing back up.

As I said - I’m alive. For those who have stuck through the dry spell, who have helped along the way, and have influenced who I am today, THANK YOU! I hope you are all well - and I look forward to catching up soon.