Atheista - › The Obligatory 2008-2009 Post About Blogging And Life In General

Atheista is now nearing it’s second anniversary [the actual date is February19]. So many things have happened since the day I started writing for this blog that I can’t believe that it’s only been that long. I somehow feel that I’ve been blogging for much longer than that. When I entered the mainstream blog community (the group of bloggers who actually know each other and see each other offline), I was but a small entity in an emerging and vibrant collective of people from different backgrounds. With regular blogging and entries that caught fire for one reason or another, my readership expanded and I was able to reach out to more people here in the Philippines and abroad. I would like to think that I’ve gone a long way already and if this is how big this blog is ever going to get, then I’m very content with that.

Back in April 2007, no one probably saw me succeeding Misteryosa as the winner for the Philippine Blog Awards’ Best Personal Blog Category. No one saw this one coming. But come to think of it, the latter part of the 2007 and the earlier part of 2008 was when my blogging reached a pretty high level. I truly believe that the best personal blog award has to go to someone who leads an interesting life that is worth blogging about. The years 2007 and 2008 were insanely busy for me. I was weighing in on national issues and at the same time being tapped to represent bloggers in nationally-televised talk shows. I was also arguably one of the most prominent bloggers to tackle issues surrounding atheism, secularism and the catholic hegemony. A lot of people didn’t appreciate my quasi-militant approach to things but that’s largely due to the fact that they would rather champion apathy over reason and logic.

That span of time also allowed me to be more active in collegiate debate. After “coming back” as an adjudicator for UP Manila in the 2007 Philippine Inter-collegiate Debate Championship, I buckled up for full-time debating. I have never been this active in debate even during my first stint. I probably joined more tournaments and debated in more rounds than any person from UP Manila during that debate season.

I did a lot of traveling during that period as well. I went on my usual sojourns to the Northern Philippines and left the country for the Worlds Universities Debate Championship in Bangkok, Thailand. Due to my fascination with Sagada and my willingness to help other people get there with as little inconvenience as possible, I put up Visit Sagada. It now stands as Google’s most relevant search result for the term “Sagada” and we’ve answered hundreds of emails from people asking various questions about their trip.

Just thinking about the past year makes me tired. I’m sure I’m leaving out huge parts of the year that was, but it’s been great. Thank you for reading.