September was the birthday for SvobodaKC. Actually, September 18th to be exact. How did I celebrate? I celebrated by being too busy to notice. Ah, the life of someone who works full time and barely has time for life, much less blogging. I was so busy, in fact, that I didn't notice that my domain, www.SvobodaKC.com, lapsed. If you click on that link, this is what you see....
That is not the SvobodaKC page, and I don't know who that girl is. Further clicking reveals that my site is worth a whole whopping 69 dollars -- whoo Hoo!. I'm too cheap to pay to buy back what is essentially my work, so therfore, I'm reverting back to www.SvobodaKC.Blogspot.com. That domain name is free. Oh, and my links to my past posts are screwed up now. When I find time, I will fix that. Google analytics has been really helpful. I've gotten over my funk about traffic when I started reading the reports and finding that my little nothing blog actually generates decent traffic, depending on what I put in as content. I have to thank publicly Tony Botello of Tonyskansascity.com for that. He updated his links to my new domain name, and so the dry spell that I had by going Tonyless is over. I have to explain. If your web page is listed in his links, he gets so many hits that people click on your link as well, thus generating traffic for your site. If Tony mentions something you wrote in his blog, well, your hits go through the roof. So I thank him profusely for all the interest he generates not only for my little corner of the blogosphere, but for the Kansas City Metro area in general.
Now, what have I learned in the past year? This blog is still an active experiment in the making. I started out touting myself as a multi media blog about the arts. I intended to be a hyperlocal news site on the local arts scene in KC. I have learned that doing such is a full time job, and as I already have a full time job, I've had to downgrade SvobodaKC to a part time hobby -- one of many. I started out with much energy in September and October, and even into January. I shot, edited and posted many videos. I was really looking forward to the Mardi Gras season in Kansas City. Then, I was invited to a loft party for a Mardi Gras crewe. I even dragged my poor wife along kicking and screaming. I was going to take some still pictures and talk about how great the local artists were for putting on such a fine party in a normally grim part of the year in Kansas City. My wife insisted we bring cookies and not come to a party empty handed. So we stopped by the grocery store and brought some sweets. We went to the top floor of a west bottoms building via freight elevator. We walked in, and sat down, and.... nothing. We got ignored. We took the cookies up to the counter, and put them with the rest of the food, and the people who were there looked at us like they were sniffing onions. There were two friendly dogs who came up to us and licked us and offered their backs for scratching, but other than that, no one even bothered to come over to as much as say hi. My wife, got pissed, I got depressed. FUCK Mardi Gras in Kansas City! I trucked on, but the wind went out of my sails. I experimented around with livestreaming with the Here! In My Car!!! program -- the world's first talkshow in a car. I met Jeff and Jessica of the Keyhole Gallery through my friend, Bill Drummond. But I let the Mardi Gras thing get me down, and frame my whole vision of the arts scene in Kansas City. Eventually, I even quit the blog for awhile in April. Then I realized that there was much more that I really loved about the arts in KC, and that many of the people who act like they are much better than everyone else aren't all that. My friend, Ken and I began voyages to communities in the area through our daytripping program, which we often do on Thursdays, usually streaming and posting as we go. We have found many unique creative things in the villages and towns that surround the Kansas City metro area. I have begun and experimental live streaming rig that I hope will allow me to stream on foot and upload visions of what I encounter almost instantaneously. So, in addition to holding a full time job, I do all this because I like to. I'll just learn to ignore the shadow people.
Finally... I have my handy dandy google calender with all the upcoming events in the area and beyond...
BLOG DOG
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