Expanding My Virtual Horizons

My name is Adam Droge. At the present time I reside in Provo, Utah while I am going to school at BYU. And if you are reading this, I'm certain you already know that. I'm not a stranger to the virtual world. And honestly, I'm not a stranger to blogging either. However, I have not yet attempted to start my own blog until now. Why not? Well, I've never really found a reason to. I use facebook as my main source of social media in expressing thoughts and connecting with others. I have had email for quite along time, although I think email is a lot different now than it is once was. It used to be that email was the main source of social interaction with friends on the web. Now it isn't. It used to be that when you made a friend, you usually got their phone number and email address. And yes, phone number used to be home phone number. Remember those phones that connected to the wall? You only needed one phone line for the whole family and many phones had wires that connected them to the wall. Cell phones weren't as popular and smart phones certainly didn't exist. That's what I remember growing up. And that was the day of email. Email was your main connection to the virtual social world. Times have changed. I think most everyone has an email address. I still do. And although I don't use it to email friends and connect with friends anymore, its certainly a part of my virtual connections. I mentioned facebook and I've had that for a number of years now. Twitter is more recent. Twitter isn't the best for social media, but its certainly fun to use to follow famous people and organizations and read what their thoughts are. Twitter is also a great source of news and information. I've always enjoyed online debating, specifically on sports sites. Before heading off on my two year mission, I got to the highest reputation level on CBSsports.com. That was fun. Currently I enjoy Utah Jazz 360 (UJ360) to debate the Jazz. ESPN.com, NFL.com, NBA.com are frequently visited sites for my sports information and discussions. I also have recently created my own YouTube channel. I have 5 or 6 videos up that don't have very many views (between 50 and 200 views). But they are their so I have contributed to the vast YouTube world. Of course like almost everyone these days, watching YouTube videos is a thing I spend time doing. So all of these aspects contributed to why I didn't think I needed a blog. I have lots of other things I like to do online, so it seemed unnecessary. I know a lot of people use it for a personal online journal type thing to tell about life events that happened to them. I'm not big into that. I have my own journal that I keep my own personal history in. I don't want to write my history to the world. And in posting photos, I prefer doing that on facebook. So there have been many reasons to not start a blog. Although it is fun to read other people's blogs on occasion, I never had a reason to start one on my own.

So why am I here? You just read a big long paragraph as to why blogging has never been pertinent to me and now you are about ready to call me crazy because you think I am starting a blog to complain about blogging. But keep your peace. That is not the case. My good friend Bane Nathos, who is the manager of Blue Box (linked on this blog), got me writing movie reviews for Blue Box and I've decided I like that. In the last two or three months, I've gotten close to ten movie reviews written. We have it set up where when either one of us sees a movie, we go home and write a review about it and he posts it on Blue Box. Yep. That's the motivation behind this. I want to start my own blog for movie reviews and other movie discussions. Yes, in the last couple of years I have become quite the movie buff. And being a Stats major, I love following the Box Office numbers each week. Now this isn't meant to compete with Blue Box, but rather to team up with it because when I post a review here on DrogeMiester's Lair, I plan on giving Bane the review and letting him post in on Blue Box. Then the review might go up in a third place and that is the Internet Movie Database. IMDb. The Movie Wikipedia. Yes, if you didn't know, when you go there and click on a movie, you can scroll down and read hundreds of reviews users have written. So that's a third place. The more exposure the reviews get, the better. So after deciding that I wanted to do that, my ideas expanded. I didn't just have to limit it to movies, I can use my blog to write my thoughts I have on sports. I love the NFL and love predicting what will happen and giving insights each week. I can use my blog to do that. Same goes for the NBA to a lesser extent and lots on the Jazz. I occasionally write blog posts for UJ360 and I can post those here as well. And I can give American Idol commentary as well as other TV shows I watch. Or if I have a random thought on whatever it is, I can post that. And as I think about it the possibilities are almost limitless. And so I am way excited about this. At first I was unsure when to start this, but I decided that the new year is a good time. I'm not big into New Years resolutions for various reasons, but this year doing this blog can be a New Years resolution. So I am excited. Are you? Writing is fun for me when I'm writing about something I enjoy, so hopefully reading this will be fun for you, whomever you are.

And as a PS, if you know how to pronounce my last name (Droge), you'll be tempted to pronounce DrogeMiester wrong. DrogeMiester is pronounced without the long "e" sound that normally is pronounced when you say my last name. So its three syllables long. :)