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Seven Years Later & I’m Still Looking to the Storytelling Horizon
After logging into WordPress this morning, I had a new — yet expected — notification:
Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!You registered on WordPress.com 7 years ago.Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.
Seven years ago today, I attended a WordPress conference here in Columbus, OH inside the Ohio Union on the campus of THE Ohio State University. My interest in blogging, which I had dabbled with a bit in the past, took on a whole new dimension and meaning by discovering the online publishing platform WordPress. After listening to a few panel discussions, I immediately went up to the open-aired, impromptu customer service lounge on the third floor of the Ohio Union and sat next to an expert (I knew this person wasn’t a genius because I wasn’t in an Apple store) and asked him to help me set up my blog that would be called Jimmy’s Daily Planet.
One of my first blog posts published here — of which there were two I wrote on July 13, 2012 — was titled ‘Eight Years Later & We Look to the Horizon’ that focused on what would be the next societal game-changer. Hence part of the inspiration for today’s title. The other half of the title will be revealed in the second half of this blog post.
FYI – I explained the name of my blog in a post four years ago today. Here’s that summary.
Paying homage to the greatest (albeit fictional) newspaper of all-time, The Daily Planet, this blog was founded on my love of my favorite superhero and disguised human of all-time: Superman and Clark Kent. The scene from Richard Donner’s 1978 classic ‘Superman’ that showed us Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent walk through the bullpen of The Daily Planet for the first time was the moment I knew I wanted to be a journalist. The chaos, palpable energy, and big city, skyscraper setting flew from the screen and landed directly into my impressionable imagination.
These few minutes showing reporters preparing to get the scoop, watching exciting individual and group dynamics (papers scattered, people typing, talking and moving) and hearing creative storytelling pitches is arguably my favorite journalistic hook.
Plus, my name is Jimmy.
And here’s that aforementioned scene.
This ‘Superman’ clip resonates as much today as it did when I saw it for the first time as a kid.
Breaking News: I’m going to step away from publishing new blog posts on Jimmy’s Daily Planet. While Jimmy’s Daily Planet and all of the blog posts — written about a wide range of topics and current events — will remain available online in its exact current form with this same web address, there are other pressing writing projects that I am excited about that I need to commit more time and energy towards. As a matter of fact, it’s been my self-imposed Monday-Friday schedule of having to come up with and write new content on this blog for so many years that has given me the time management skills and confidence to now apply to new storytelling projects.
I wish I had the time to keep writing my daily blog — I really do — but the inspiration for my future projects will be rooted in and connected, in some way, to my writing style, experience, and association with my favorite headline/title I’ve ever come up with: Jimmy’s Daily Planet.
Here’s TV producer, writer, and storyteller extraordinaire Chuck Lorre with the right words at the right time.
I’ve loved writing Jimmy’s Daily Planet. I’ve had so much fun. And now everything that’s been put into this creative storytelling venture throughout the past seven years will be used to tell new, exciting stories that I hope people will connect with and like as much as I do.
Dr. Ian Malcolm, the fictional chaos theorist in ‘Jurassic Park,’ famously said that perfect turn of phrase — by way of the late author Michael Crichton — “life finds a way.”
I’m hoping that brilliant literary and cinematic adage can be amended to “writing finds a way.”
Thank you to everyone who read Jimmy’s Daily Planet and supported me along the way!
The Century Mark!
This is my 100th written blog post!
To think, “The Value of the Dollar is Rising in the American Restaurant” was my first post back on July 13, 2012. Where has the time gone…
It all started with attending a WordPress Camp last July at the beautiful student union at The Ohio State University. My Mom saw a tiny blurb in the bottom right hand corner of the Columbus Dispatch in its Friday edition. A validated parking pass and $40 later, the rest is history. Throughout that Saturday, I learned from the ground up about this blogging phenomenon called WordPress. I spoke with a lot of fascinating people who were fully immersed in this culture of building, maintaining and posting to user-created websites.
This has been a tremendous outlet for me to write, post and share on a daily basis on a myriad of topics. This includes food, travel, sports, technology, movies and music, to only name a few. There have even been poems (This Poem Will Be Legen-wait for it… & We’re a Little Bit Normal…& A Lot Griswold). In the section, “What Amazing Looks & Sounds Like,” I’ve put together a collection of sights and sounds that are, well, amazing!
Throughout “Jimmy’s Daily Planet,” you’ll find engaging multimedia, like pictures, music and videos, which makes the entries multidimensional and perfect for the modern reader and curious purveyor of information.
I’ve been thinking of how to properly celebrate my 100th written blog post. For a while, I wasn’t sure. This confusion ended immediately once I re-read three familiar words.
Of course!
This scene was my first realization when I was young for wanting to become a journalist, which is what I graduated from college as. What’s next? I’m going to work hard to continue to write well-written, researched, relevant and original articles with creative and fresh twists each day in the hopes of formally meeting my own Mr. White and Lois Lane.
Does that mean I also have to be Superman? If that’s the case, I suppose I could probably deal with those responsibilities in between deadlines…
Jimmy's Daily Planet 