In the fun and excitement of all things April, I forgot my own anniversary. One year ago this month (April 5th, to be exact), I began this blog because, well, it seemed like the thing to do. In my first post I outlined the hesitations I had, but so far it’s been a very rewarding experience. I particularly enjoy reading the comments people leave on my posts, because it helps me to understand when people agree with me, when they disagree, and why. In some cases, reader comments have actually changed my mind. Thanks for that.

Anyway, on this one-year-ish anniversary, I thought some of you might be interested in some christindal.ca stats (since I began tracking mid-May 2006):

Posts: 162
Comments: 176
Categories: 28
Absolute Unique Visitors: 3,535
Visits: 8,306
Page Views: 15,911

One of the other fun things I can tell is the keywords that people type into a search engine to end up at my blog. Aside from the obvious “Chris Tindal,” “Green Party Toronto,” and even “Elizabeth May,” here are some of my favourites. (I wonder if these people found what they were looking for. I’ve linked each term to the page where they would have ended up.)

• ironic news
• john wayne
• cow farts
• men in suits
• garbage puns
• stolen bikes
• poseidon vs adventure of poseidon
• stockwell day evolution
• we’re under attack
• fake id shops toronto
• couldn’t get her attention, eh
• pro-bear agenda colbert

I’ve added a new section to this site (accessible through the main navigation on the left) called “In The News” that will track coverage I’m receiving in the media, including recent stories in the National Post and Now Magazine. It’s the first of many new content areas I’ll be adding over the next few weeks as this website makes the transition from blog to campaign site. I’ll also continue to blog here though, and those posts will remain accessible though the main page and categorized via the links on the right-hand side.

Fine world, I’ll play your blogging game. But I don’t have to pretend to understand or like it.

I think my biggest hesitation is that part of me still feels like it’s a bad idea to broadcast ideas straight from the top of one’s head to the entire world (and, by entire world, I mean the small percentage of us with web access) without at least mulling them over a bit first. It wasn’t that long ago that you’d think before you spoke, and even then only a handful of people would hear you, without archiving your comments in perpetuity. (And yes, I’m aware of how obnoxious it is when 24-year-olds get nostalgic.)

I guess what I’m saying is, at their worst, blogs can make it really easy to quickly share half-baked ideas before you have a chance to think better of them. I think we’ll all just have to get to the point where we stop expecting people (and remember, for these purposes politicians are people too) to live a gaff-free existence, because that’s just not human.

I fully expect to use this blog to say lots of unintentionally stupid things, or things that I may believe at the time but will contradict later, all in the hopes of coming up with a good idea now and then. I hope it works out for us.

Oh, and every now and then I’ll still take the time to create some well-rounded thoughts too.