Brizcariz.com turns 1

A little over a year ago I started exchanging emails and late night HTML/CSS coding conversations with my good buddy Brent Carothers.  He was interesting in dipping his toe into the murky waters of blogging, but wasn’t quite sure about the whole thing, even as he was buying a URL and putting up his first post.  

About a week after his blog was born, I linked to BrizCariz.com and gave props to the nascent, but sure to be awesome new creation.  Yet, Brent was not so sure his new baby would live.  After all, he is a Fellow in the highly selective and excruciatingly time-consuming Duke University Pediatric Cardiology program.  And with the little free time he has, he does an amazing job as a father and husband, all while maniacally following all these fantasy football and Washington Redskins.  

Well, this weekend, Brizcariz.com turned 1, and Brent wrote a great retrospective on the year of blogging.  In his post he noted his initially uncertainty about sharing his life with the Interwebs:

i am not a blogger. 

i’ve never had a website, i don’t do facebook, and i’ll probably never “tweet.”  i am perfectly comfortable with the majority of my acquaintances having no idea what i’m doing at this exact moment.  the truth is that i’ve never really embraced the 21st century phenomenon wherein average people feel the need to broadcast their every average thought and action throughout the universe, just because.

 And then reflected on how much he’s changed in the year since:

looking back and vividly remembering my frame of mind while typing that very post, i simply can’t believe how much has changed.  i now have 365 facebook friends, two websites (if you haven’t visited BroodingBurgundy yet, check it outhere), and i use my phone more for tweeting than for making actual calls.  i’m not just on the grid; i built the grid.  and at least as much as anyone else i know in person, i most assuredly am a blogger.  some days i find myself evaluating my entire agenda under the rubric of “bloggability.”…..

and summed it up with a quite eloquent few lines about why blogging is so fun for so many of us: 

more importantly, though, and much to my surprise, i quickly came to enjoy the opportunities afforded by The Riz to articulate some otherwise private thoughts, to share with family some otherwise buried treasures, and to promote a dialogue with friends from near and far, past and present, that otherwise would not be possible within the context of my insanely busy work schedule and the great many responsibilities of a husband and father.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Brent is one of the most talented, interesting, and intriguing people I’ve ever met (anyone who can appreciate both the inner workings of the human heart while also maintaining an unhealthy obsession with all things ballpark/carnival food is nothing if not intriguing).  If you’ve not “peeped the Riz”  in the last year, I think today’s the day you should.  

And I’m not just saying that because Briz calls me his “blogging Yoda” - though I do have that going for me, which is nice.