Well, well, well. This is the first post for my latest blog idea. I’m sincerely hoping this one lasts, my track record with starting website ideas has been worse than [offensive stereotype] in an [unflattering situation].

So if you skipped my About, yet for some reason decided to backtrack through old posts, here’s a snapshot about who I am, where I’ve been, why I’m here and where I want to go:

To give myself some blog cred, I started keeping an online journal since before blog was the term. My first personal site was hosted by my high school the year the world wide web started becoming a thing (1995). It had a tiled blue and black textured background, Times New Roman in white italic, the tag worked and a rainbow horizontal ruler separated sections of the first page. There was no CSS, Dreamweaver or even PHP. Coming from BBS’ing, my website had a series of dramatic welcome pages before you landed on the main page. It didn’t take long before the reality of the internet upset district supervisors that didn’t understand how links worked and were outside students’ control, that i moved my site to a friend’s friend’s webserver, and so easyway.com/~didi was my new residence on the web. This turned into julie.mlinks.com when my favorite BBS offered hosting, and eventually my first domain, amabilis.net. That site was a success, maybe nothing compared to what’s out there today but it was a pioneer in a new frontier, and it was a fun and exciting time.

I’ll skip all the sentimentals and just say THANK BLOG we made it past the 9pt Verdana era.

In 2006 my first marriage was in its final stages. I stopped sharing my personal life because it was getting too personal. By early 2007 the separation was official, and so was my disconnect to my blog. I still posted occasionally, but it was sporadic and I was told kinda depressing because it was usually memories or feelings still grieving the loss of my dad (in 2005) and now a close friend, my boys’ “daycare lady”, to breast cancer.

In 2009 I started blogging my fitness journey and Juliefit.com was born. Finally, I could blog and share like wild again. This felt great and YouTube started taking a chunk of my attention but eventually that blog too suffered neglect.

So, here I am with a shiny new domain and ideas. I was disappointed after setting up this cute short domain that there’s a successful similarly named website but oh well, I’m not competing for anything and it’s not like it is the most unique of concepts. So, I hope a lawyer never has to read this or ask me about this post in a deposition. Oh boy, ego getting ahead of myself there..

Shiny new ideas, right! I mentioned at the beginning of this post I have a track record, and I do! I’m a domain hoarder that was disappointed “domainhoarder.com” was taken. I had registered a domain related to my new career path and wanted to blog from there, but then worried about Juliefit and regular life posts… so that’s why I registered xojulie.com, so I could just blog about me, about my life, like I’m writing to myself.

I’m going to write about school.
I’m going to write about web design.
I’m going to write about my dog.
I’m going to write about my kids.
I’m going to write about my husband.
I’m going to write about myself.
I’m going to write about my childhood.
I’m going to write about adulthood.
I’m going to write about my divorce.
I’m going to write about food.
I’m going to write about family.
I’m going to write about health ailments.
I’m going to rant.
I’m going to write about past posts dug up from backups.
I’m going to even do videos occasionally!

And before you get all drama excited about any of those topics, I am going to have restrictions for some of the content. Most things will be public, because that’s just the way I am, but some things will require a level of membership that I’ll grant close friends, and some restricted to only my closest friends.

So… and I type that often, “So,” “Well,” “Anyway,” “Also,” — I look forward to this return to the blog universe and all the things the near future holds. Thanks for visiting my site and don’t forget to sign the guestbook — err, subscribe to the RSS and mailing list for regular updates ;)

xo Julie