It was a passive-aggressive MInnesota winter day; a storm threatened to make the afternoon commute miserable, but all it was doing was making traffic between Saint Paul and Minnetonka miserable.
I was working at a little startup that, five months after 9/11, was already exhibiting the stench of death that would soon stalk the high-tech market. I was being managed by two of the stupidest people I’ve ever met in the world of business – a titanic accomplishment, in my various careers.
And I was smack dab in the middle of trying to rebuild my life. Not in the sense that a refugee from Rwanda tries to get back to subsistence – no, nothing that eternal and existential. I was just a guy who’d been divorced a little over a year, busy raising a couple of kids – 10 and 9, at the time – and trying to figure out where I fit into the world.
I didn’t have much of a social circle – for a variety of reasons, the one I had hadn’t survived my ten years of marriage. I certainly hadn’t had the time or, perhaps, the wisdom to rebuild one the conventional way.
And the pall of gathering rot about the company punctuated the sense that had crept over me; a chapter of my life had ended, and I had no idea what the new chapter was. It was more a sense than an idea – but it was real, and it wasn’t a whole lot different than the restlessness I’d been wrestling with 16 years earlier.
Lunchtime came. I pulled out a sandwich – that stench of imminent corporate collapse had turned the social, lunching-three-times-a week crowd I worked with into hermits – and started grazing about the internet.
I got to Time.com, and opened up an article about “The New Generation of Conservative Intellectuals”. That grabbed me. I hadn’t been especially active in thinking about politics, much less actual politics – but I fondly remembered my time as a political talk show host at KSTP in the late ’80s. It was a time I’d felt…
…well, not like I did that day.
I read onward. It introduced a number of writers – most notably, Andrew Sullivan, a gay British writer who was making waves with his blog, a new invention that was sweeping the internet.
I thought “Blog? Good lord, what a stupid word”.
But there was a sidebar piece on “What is a blog”. Which I read. And took notes, to take home.
And that night, after the kids were in bed and the dishes done, I went out to blogger.com, and started writing. After briefly considering calling it “Reel News” – after a “‘zine” I’d fantasized about putting out, back when ‘zines – small, do-it-yourself print magazines – were the bleeding edge of DIY media – I settled on “Shot in the Dark”. It seemed to fit; that’s what it was; that’s what most everything in my life had been. It seemed to fit.
And twenty years later, it still does.
It’s hard to count up all the things that this blog has brought to my life over the past, ahem, two decades. But I’ll try.
It brought me a social life. The “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers” hasn’t really been active in a decade – but the connections that were made haven’t gone anywhere. Some of the best friends I have, I have from doing this.
It brought me a voice. While I started this blog thinking that I might reach 5-10 people a day, I thought that’d be just fine. It was mostly about the writing. While blog traffic isn’t’ what it was 15 years ago, I still reach a lot more than 10 people a day. And even if there were still five people a day clicking into the site, it’d still be an outlet for all the things that have been let out, here, over the past 20 years.
It got me back on the air. This blog led me into contact with John HInderaker and Scott Johnson from Power Line, and Chad, Brian, Atomizer and JB from Fraters LIbertas, King Banaian from SCSU Scholars and Ed Morrissey from Captain’s Quarters, which got noticed by Hugh Hewitt, who dubbed us the Northern Alliance of Blogs, which in turn led us – after another one of those bouts of restlessness of mine – into pitching the idea of doing an all-blogger talk show to AM1280, which incredibly got green-lit by some of the least risk-averse radio management I’ve ever met. And that – for almost 18 years now – has been an unalloyed blessing in my life.
It got, and kept, me independent. Along about 2013, when Facebook promised to take away the content management headaches, and Twitter forcibly limited the length of one’s thoughts, I thought about following a lot of bloggers over to social media. I didn’t think about it long, though. Part of it was suspicion of Big Tech’s motives, even then – which were utterly justified in retrospect. This blog owes nothing to Jeff Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey. Neil Young can bitch about me until he turns blue(er) in the face. I’m here, and I’m not going away until I’m good and ready.
And perhaps most importantly, it’s given me a…what’s the right word? A rhythm.
I’m not a fundamentally orderly person. I thrive on chaos; I’m one of those fish who swims toward the turbulent water. I was increcibly bad at things like “follow-through” (outside work, anyway) and “focus”. I started my adult life in a career – radio – that is chaos incarnate, where changing jobs. yearly is (or was) the norm, and went into another career where a (largely) contractor’s life ion’t a whole lot more stable. It’s been a career that would take a chaotic and spin him into a complete basket case, as indeed I kind of was on the morning of February 5, 2002.
But for the past twenty years, sitting down five mornings a week to write something, has been the beat behind my days. Through cataracts of creativity, and bouts of writer’s block so serious I could taste it, I made it my goal to write something at 6AM, 7AM and 11AM, every weekday, with very few breaks. It might be crap, it might be perfunctory, it might be something I’m enduringly proud of, or something in the great in-between – but hitting those deadlines has lent my life a discipline and focus I didn’t have before.
I finish thoughts. I follow through on actions (more than I did, anyway). I think about “what comes next”.
Obsession? Habit? Therapy? Blessing? Zen exercise?
I can cop to any or all of them.
I wish I could remember when I first started following your blog. Quite a while ago. Please keep up the great work, I’ve enjoyed this long running show. Eric (not my real name).
Thank you, Mitch. This enterprise has been a great and ongoing blessing.
I don’t even remember how I got here initially but it’s been a long-ass time. I hate to think it’s been 20 years but very well could be.
Still checking in every day.
Happy blog-birthday from the gluten addiction czar of the MOB!
I, too, don’t remember when and why I found this blog. I can only say that it wasn’t 20 years ago. I do come here a few times per day. Keep hammering away, Mitch. I believe I speak for many people here when I say we appreciate you.
Berg was the inspiration for my much shorter lived blog. What I lacked in endurance I made up for in causing reprobate skull explosions. For a time, I think I was the most hated man in the TC’s leftist circle jerk community.
Good times.
I’m also trying to remember the exact timing of my finding Sitd, guessing I became aware knocking around the various Northern Alliance sites, and have been a huge fan since those early times. Been a daily visitor to the blog for a very long time and have enjoyed your writings (and the commenters) thoroughly. I’ll continue to be a fan for as long you choose to keep writing, and I’m hoping that will be for a very long time.
Happy Anniversary Mitch!
About 2006 for me.
I found you through Hugh Hewitt’s blog during the election year of 2004. Does the Northern Alliance still exist?
Anyone know what happened to Hugh, I heard he went cuck.
I was part of the Class of ’05. My wife actually heard about blogging first, and told me I should look into it. I poked around a bit first to get some examples to decide if this was something I wanted to do. Not sure how I hit on SiTD initially, but I stuck, and I think the ready-made MN network was part of that. I’ve been coming around here ever since, though my own blog is in suspended animation.
I still use the same password I used when I first logged on in 2005 – but I must have been reading for a few months before that.
Mr. Berg, thank you.
Like so many, I have no clue how I came upon your scribbles, but they offer a breath of fresh air in a world of smog. It is how I start my day every Monday through Friday.
Love live The Northern Alliance Radio Network, and A Shot in the Dark.
Dang fat fingers!
* Long live The Northern Alliance Radio Network, and A Shot in the Dark.
Fixed it.
Jeff Zuckerberg??
Mark Zuckerberg is the one you want to keep an eye on.
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Happy belated blogiversary, Mitch. It seems like 17 years ago since I started visiting SitD. It was shortly after I met you at a MOB party in St. Cloud. That was back in the heyday of blogging. I had just started blogging & you were kind enough to help me get Sitemeter installed on what was then TheRevolutionWillBeBlogged.blogspot.com
Thanks for the great writing over the years. Thanks for 17 years of friendship, too.
Been a few years since I linked to SITD via a blogger/former liberal friend. I have enjoyed sharing thoughts with fellow free thinkers and having Elephant in the Room perform in my back yard this summer.
Don’t recall exactly, but think it was in 2003 when I was looking for an unbiased narrative of the Iraqi endeavor and most likely via a clickbait at Powerline or Captain’s Quarters. Mitch can actually look up when we all joined – he has the logs.
What became of PrinceOfDarkness666?
Thanks for sharing your story with us. It’s a big part of what makes SITD successful.
Congratulations, Mr. Berg. It’s been a great ride. Along with Powerline and Instapundint, you are an essential read, especially for those Minnesotans whose political melatonin run red in a sea of blue madness.
Blade;
I was wondering the same thing about theFedSucks.
How about angry clown and flash?
JPA,
Mitch can actually look up when we all joined – he has the logs.
Yes, but there is one complicating factor: this blog has changed platform twice.
From February 2002 to March 2004, it was hosted on my own domain, but produced by “Blogger.com”, like most blogs back then.
From then until November 2006, I was on the same domain, but used “Movable Type”. Which was a fine content manager, except it was chock full of security holes; I remember having 6,000 spam comments in two hours, once.
So in November 2006, I changed to WordPress.
My user logs from the Blogger era – and most of the content – is long gone. No idea how to find it. The Movable Type years are on my server somewhere, but again, everything MT touched was a disaster, and I haven’t used it in 15 years, even if it still works.
So I can easy get all the data – back to the end of ’06. Beyond that? Crapshoot.
Blade: He pops in once or twice per year here. I’m friends with him on FB. I think he’s mostly drifted away from social media. I see only very occasional things from him here and there on FB, usually complaining about the the Glorious MN Chokers….errr….Vikings. He graduated from the same fine Catholic school that my kids attend/attended and is in his early 30s (I believe…he was class of 2005 IIRC).
And Mitch, I’ve been reading you since your first platform. You are my single, surviving daily blog must-read – well, as best as I can keep up daily. I only read SItD during my infrequent periods of “I have nothing to do at the moment”. Hence I’m often a day or 3 behind. Like right now.
But thank you for your output, time, and effort.