The first time I heard the word “blog” I was in college – maybe 2000, or 2001 or so? I had a crush on Wil Wheaton as a kid and searched for him on – gosh, I dunno. Alta Vista, maybe? Or Lycos?

Weren’t those the days? Remember Flooz? Kids, ask your parents.

I took a few cracks at blogging right away. A couple of the cooler people I knew had LiveJournal accounts, so I got one too, and it followed me from Winston-Salem to New Haven. The work I did at GCN was sorta like blogging, though we called it a “column” and I updated it by e-mailing Word documents.

I started another blog at Salon.com, back when they did that sort of thing, in the fall of 2003, but after a month they wanted me to start paying them for the privilege of writing online. Since I was having trouble keeping my lights turned on and my rent paid at the time, I let that blog die.

Then, on Christmas Eve 2004, I started the blog that continues in this form today. I was about to start the graduate Professional Writing program at the University of Oklahoma and I thought, “I need an outlet. Somewhere to play.” In February 2006 I bought this domain name, set up a blog, moved all my old posts over here, and have been here ever since.

Except, you may notice, I’ve become erratic. I don’t post often. All your better bloggers post at least once daily, or at least on some kind of regular schedule. And I haven’t been doing that.

What I have been doing is having a really crappy handful of months, and yes, that’s affected things. You guys know about most of that, and what you don’t know about I’m not telling you, at least not online anyway. And besides, the whole point of this paragraph is to tell you that things are looking way, way up – sky high, actually.

As of yesterday I have a fabulous new job, as the Managing Editor of Oklahoma Today magazine. Which I sorta just can’t believe. I want to reach through space-time, tap the Nathan of December 24, 2004, on the shoulder and say, “DON’T WORRY LOOK AT WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN!”

I’ve wrestled for a long time what the purpose of this website is. What the heck the name of it means and why I keep it. The deal is, I love blogging. I really do. I love anything that allows me to write, especially to write about things I genuinely care about. So I’m not going to stop blogging.

But what is going to happen is that this website is going to go away. OkayCity.com, very soon, will not exist.

So much of the last year and a half of my life has been about transition. This has been hard and awful, but also much of it has been really, really good. My reasons for getting rid of this domain name and the archives of this site are really boring ones about building a “writer’s platform” and I’m happy to speak with you guys about that if you want. I own my name’s .com address, and while something is parked there now, very soon Brian and I will be building me a new website. Which will have a blog. Which – swear to God – I will update regularly.

I’ve learned a great deal in the last year about the business of writing, and publishing, and I’m confident this is the way to go, and excited to start a new adventure. So I hope you’ll join me in the new place; and I hope you’ll have fond memories of this place. Thank you guys for reading along all this time, those of you who do.

Peace out -

Nathan