Thursday, July 25, 2013

I've been blogging for a year... Yesterday?

So I saw that Dex over at AEIOU and Sometimes Why? was celebrating his second blog-i-versary (his term... not mine) back on July 13th.

THEN I saw that Erick over at the Wonderful Wonderblog was celebrating 7 YEARS!!!

THEN... I saw that Michael Lewindowski over at Memories of Toymorrow was celebrating his 1 year Anniversary, and mentioned it on July 22nd!

And that got me thinking... I couldn't remember exactly when I started blogging about all the second-hand crap that I buy at Goodwill (and other places) so I had to investigate.

But first, I want to congratulate ALL of those guys, as I have been following, reading, and enjoying their blogs for quite some time now.

Happy Blog-Birthday, you studs.

But then I want to point out that MY first blog post was back on July 24th of last year!


The picture above is the very first picture I posted to my blog. At the time I only knew they were from a baggy I'd bought at the Brewer, ME Goodwill. They were obviously E.T. I just wanted to give a hint of the sort of thing I would be posting about on my new blog. I put out a call to help identify them and I found out they were game pieces from an old E.T. board game. Ever since I found that out, the idea that the rest of the game might have been kicking around the very same Goodwill store that day has haunted my dreams... But on that fateful day the Goodwill Geek was born! 


Bitten by a radioactive Thrift Store, the Goodwill Geek stood for second-hand geekiness everywhere he went afterwards! With the powers of endless patience to dig through piles of old, broken remote control cars and Hotwheels car-tracks with missing pieces to retrieve the awesome vintage Happy Meal toys hiding beneath! With the eyes of a biblio-phile on the prowl, picking out secondhand graphic novels, Little Golden Books, and Choose Your Own Adventure books in a sea of Babysitters Club novels! This Geek was ready to tell his tale! 

Since I've been blogging for a year, a lot of stuff has happened to me!

- I joined the League of Extraordinary Bloggers! In fact, I created this blog just so I could join!!! My first post for the League was an imaginary road trip!


- There was the time I brought home the AWESOME Toxic Crusader's Poster book! That was during my very first month of blogging!


- I featured some excellent Comic book finds including Iron Man's Demon in a Bottle and a classic volume of TMNT comics!


- Then I joined Reis O'Brien's Dork Horde!!! It was a proud day when I took the hood!


- Still one of my favorite posts was the one detailing the weird collection of art-books I've acquired. 


- I professed my love for Fisher Price's Little People! Not just once but twice!!!


- I won a pack of goodies from none other than Michael Lewandowski from the aforementioned Memories of Toymorrow! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles helped me open it when it arrived!




- I helped in my own small way to kick off the Great Candy Corn Wars of 2012


- I finally revealed the Goodwill Geek Cave for all the world to see!!! (I think I'm going to have to do some update pictures here sometime soon, as the Cave is looking very different in many ways these days...


- I also won an awesome Firefly tribute book from Brian over at Cool and Collected! 


- I showed off my Green Lantern Action League collection AND the awesome Dex-Starr custom that I traded Reis O'Brien a bunch of California Raisins for!!!


- Thanks to Eric from Toyriffic I started listening to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's Thrift Shop before it was COOL to listen to it!






- I tried to identify a handful of mystery toys! (You guys were NO help by the way... just sayin'...)

These are not all mystery toys... but some of them are...

- By far one of the most exciting things to happen to me as a blogger was getting to see the movie, Motivational Growth while it was still travelling the festival circuit. My interest in the trailer drew the attention of director, Don Thacker, who gave me a two-part interview (Here's pt. 1... and Here's pt. 2), and permission to see the film. It was pretty great. I loved the film and can't wait to see where it pops up next. 


- What turned out to be one of my absolute favorite posts of ALL TIME was one of the three I did for the League's Pirate's Week. I wrote about my favorite, cheap-ass set of pirate figurines, and gave them each a name, personality, and back-story. It was one of those posts where I just let loose and write cRaZy!!!


- I started a new feature when I got my new iPod with a built-in camera called Goodwill Gone Bad. I featured pictures of items I could not picture ANYONE buying from Goodwill (I then spent time standing in line behind a woman buying one of those VERY items... so that just showed me). I then plopped my iPod into a bucket full of bleach-water and let it soak over night. So... that ended that feature. But it was fun while it lasted! I got to do 2 of them

 

- I also told the convoluted tale of my childhood love for mini-figures for the League... and the handful of specific characters that I carried around obsessively. 


- One of my highest-hitting posts was one where I just took some random shots of stuff in the cave! I wasn't sure how to feel about that. I've put a LOT more effort into posts that haven't been nearly as popular... 



- Not really due totally to the fact that I have this blog... but still related to it... I did a Charnel Chat over at the Grim Reader. I think I had the confidence to contact him and do one because I'd been writing on here for a while. 

The Grim Reader

- Another couple of favorites I did for the League, I reminisced about my first impressions of the Thundercats, and talked about how much I wished the California Raisins would make a come-back!

   

I've even won a couple of contests recently! I just posted about my winnings from Hake's Americana and Collectibles... and I'll be posting soon about my winnings from the Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture "One Man's Trash..." giveaway

Hake's Americana & Collectibles  pop pop..! it's trash culture.



So as you can see, it's been a very busy year! And I am looking ahead to the future! I'm still participating in the League posts week after week, and I'm discovering new blogs and interesting bloggers every day, and I feel like these are my people. What I write... I write for them. I love the blogging community I've become a part of in the last year... and I am greedy for more! 

22 comments:

  1. Been a lot of fun reading your blog for the last year, here's hoping you top it this year :)

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    1. I hope so too! Thanks for the kind words, man!

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  2. Replies
    1. I will sir! You do the same! Thank you for all the kind comments!

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  3. Congrats Derek I been enjoying your blog and I plan on doing so in the years to come. : )

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  4. Congratulations on your first great year of blogging and geek-ery. It's been an absolute pleasure keeping up with your Goodwill adventures and everything else you've shared with us. Thank you for doing what you do so well and being a true inspiration.

    And here's to many more years ahead..!

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    1. Thanks very much! And here's to looking ahead to your own first year!

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  5. Congrats congrats! You have had a busy year! I am really glad I read this blog. I feel the same way, it is really nice to connect with people that share similar interests and stuff. Here's to hoping that the next year will be full of even more and fun topics! I look forward to reading! : )

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    1. Thanks so much! I really enjoy your blog too! Let's all keep it going and going and going...

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  6. Congrats man! Hope there are many...MANY more!

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    1. Thank you! Love Something Wicked This Way Comes... too!

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  7. Congrats on one year! I enjoy reading about the stuff that you find.

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  8. I feel like I can't high five you too big, seeing as how I just caught on a week ago (though surprisingly, I have read a bunch of your referenced posts cuz I'm an archive troll).... Once I latch on, I have to go back in time and see all that I missed. It's a thing..... And you're right, guy. The blogging community is awesome (especially for introverts who desire non-committal relationships with zero accountability and those whose interests in life leave them sequestered and unrelatable to most everyone else) Which are not bad traits!
    I was at Goodwill today and didn't see a dang thing you would possibly buy. But got myself some pretty groovy stuff ;)
    Congrats and lookin forward to continued toy voyeurism!

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    1. I'm on board here with almost every part of this comment. Thanks for the kind words!

      I do have a disagreement with your assessment of the community, even if it was meant tongue-in-cheek or self-deprecating. I don't feel like any of us desire non-committal relationships with zero accountability (yourself included?). I myself have been married for 15 years and am raising 3 children. I'm just one blogger out of dozens I've met through this blog, through the League, or wherever. And not one blogger I've talked to, as socially awkward as they may be, seems to undervalue their personal relationships. I know this part of your comment was probably not meant to be offensive, so I'm not going to get offended. I just wanted to respond.

      I do want to thank you for the interest you've shown in my blog, and to tell you how excited I am that I've discovered yours and how interesting it is (linked to it on my main page in fact!). I actually recommended it to my wife to check out, because I think you aesthetic is very much something she'd be floored by. You think I can't groove on kitschy owls and pea-green kitchen accouterments? YOU COULDN'T BE MORE WRONG!!!

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    2. Ha ha! Totally tongue-in-cheek ;) But if it wasn't meant that way, you gave me several avenues of escape to "Saving Faceville". You're one gracious dude.
      I really do love the relational aspects of blogging. My inter-friends have helped me through some sucky personal times... all well documented in true TMI fashion on my blog. Right on for callin me out sideways ;) It's not a bad thing.

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  9. Congrats on the milestone! I was just thinking today on how long I've been at it (over five years) and how much I've covered/read/how many connections I've made etc.

    Time well spent.

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    1. Thanks very much Eric! Toyriffic is a great blog that stands the test of time for sure! I can only aspire to keep GH4G going that long!

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  10. Holy reminders! My site is coming up on it's 4 year anniversary. Congratulations on your first year. Here's to more to come.

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    1. Hey, congrats on the impending anniversary, and thank you!

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    2. I also want to say how much inspiration I've drawn from your building a better toy-room posts. I want so much to make the Goodwill Geek Cave a little more sleek and sophisticated. I'm... working on it?

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