The year of 2006 was an interesting and challenging one. I married my wonderful wife Bonnie in January, poured my spare time into a startup over the summer and then launched it in November. This year promises new beginnings. After a 6-month hiatus from blogging I’m working on a CamWorld redesign and want to start blogging more regularly again. To be honest, I’ve missed it. There is something therapeutic about telling the world what you think and why; whether it’s about the horrendous job the Bush Administration has done leading this country for the past six years or about why Paris Hilton needs to just shut her pie-hole, close her legs and go away.
Dave Winer calls blogging the “unedited voice of a person” which is exactly correct. This echoes my defintion of blogs written back in 1999:
You see, CamWorld is about me. It’s about who I am, what I know, and what I think […] CamWorld is a peek into the subconsciousness that makes me tick. […] CamWorld is an experiment in self-expression. And that experiment is not over. […] Weblogs, however, are designed for an audience. They have a voice. They have a personality. Simply put, they are an interactive extension of who you are.
We know now that blogs are not going away. Increasingly, they play an important role in teaching the media that every person has a voice and the right to broadcast that voice. If enough of those voices are united, they are a force to be reckoned with. Freedom of speech is one of the founding principles of this great country, despite what the Bush Administration might wish to believe otherwise. Calling dissenters and those who disagree with them “unpatriotic” and passing laws that take away our civil rights is a step backwards. Let’s hope that 2007 is a better year for the retention of our civil liberties and gets us one more step closer to the day our country can put the Bush Administration behind us and begin healing the damage they have done.
I have a busy year planned for 2007. The wife and I are working on our first little tax break for 2007, but no luck so far. I’m working in a more stable income bracket (for NYC) and am finally tackling the debt I took on when working for the Democratic political campaigns in 2003-2004. Being in debt for so long really sucks but I see it as my own personal sacrifice for the effort to get rid of a President who is so wrong for this country it’s not even funny; no not funny at all, tragic and disturbing really.
Stay tuned for the new CamWorld design, which will have some neat new features. I hope to have it done later this week.
Posted by Cameron Barrett at January 1, 2007 05:36 PM