Happy 2008!

I can't believe that it is a new year already! I don't have a clue as to where 2007 went. It was a great year though. As busy as I was taking care of Chelsea as a work-from-home dad, I've treasured the past 365 days I've been able to do it. She has become her own person with a great sense of humor and a truly independent spirit. She is a handful but being a dad has been a great experience.

There are days, weeks and months when I don't know if I'm going to find the time to breathe and unfortunately it has meant that this site has suffered. I don't think that I'll ever have the opportunity to return to what I was hoping to become - a full-fledged news, information and opinion portal into the world of Disney. Wallpaper of the Week has become Wallpaper of the Whenever. The biggest question posed around here has become when am I ever going to post another trivia contest? The discussion boards are about as lively as a cemetery.

And yet I'm not ready to let it all go. There's still a plethora of information from when we were doing more frequent posting and I'm still making enough money from ads and affiliate sales to cover the costs of hosting that information. So I will continue keeping StartedByAMouse.com up and running into the new year - and hopefully beyond.

Not to go all Doogie Howser and all but I'm hoping that perhaps the most updated section of the site will be this Blog Ride you're reading right now. I hate New Year's resolutions so I won't call it that but I'm hoping to sit down at the keyboard as often as once a day and pound out my thoughts about life - hopefully more Disney-related than not but maybe my thoughts will wander elsewhere. Maybe this grand experiment will last two days before I give up on it. Who knows? But I'd like to give it a try.

This may signify nothing. Business as usual. A new post every so often. Or it may signify a shift further away from a journalist-type Disney site to a more personal-viewpoint site. Or I may find time and inspiration to re-focus my energy on getting this back into the stratosphere of the hundreds of other Disney sites that soldier on each day. Like I said, who knows?

Hopefully, in 2008, we'll continue frequent trips to the Disneyland Resort and I might have some pictures or commentary from these visits to share. Maybe we'll take a trip east to Walt Disney World this year - Chelsea's first and our first in about five years. Maybe I'll catch a Disney movie in a theater, on DVD or on cable and write up a review. Maybe I'll buy Chelsea a Disney toy that she thinks is the bee's knees. Who knows?

But what I do know is that my family and I are happy and healthy and I'm thankful to everyone who visits - whether to check to see if there's something new or because a search engine directed you here. A new year is full of new possibilities. So I'm turning the calendar page anew and wiping the slate clean as I try to revive this moribund website and turn it into something again. What exactly that is, who knows? But let's see where the attempt takes us.

Happy 2008!
Matt