Well, today happens to be my birthday. So it seemed like the just-right day for a little blog re-birthday. (Fun!)

Once upon a time, the internet was a much less crowded, much more anonymous (or so it seemed) place. We’ll call this way-back-when time the 90s. It was a time before Facebook, before Wordpress, before terms like social media and blog and tweet were even coined. (Okay, so tweet was a legitimate word back then, but you get my drift.) Young, aspiring web designers had domains, and most of those domains had journals (i.e. blogs) where melodramatic teens and pre-teens wrote overly-personal accounts of their thrilling personal lives.

Unless you were me and were terrified of ever hurting or offending the characters (i.e. friends and family members) in your entries, in which case you wrote your journal under a pseudonym in abstract hyperbole. But I digress.

That was my first blog, and when that chapter closed, I didn’t blog for awhile. And then I started this blog, which I affectionately called Red Herring, in 2005. Its sole purpose was to give me a place to post noteworthy links, quotes, short diatribes, and other diversions (thus the name). At the time, I called it “micro-blogging.”

In 2010, we would, by and large, call this kind of blogging tweeting.

And (shockingly), that’s what I now use Twitter for, among other things. (Duh.)

I’ve found that what I really need this space to be is a place for expression. Because sometimes, people like Eileen and Briana and Havi and things like daily life inspire me to write about heart things — purpose, meaning, head-heart stuff, intuition, spirituality. And other times, people like my clients and my husband and things like my own crappy (awful, horrible) user experiences inspire me to write about head things — usability, politics, Wordpress, marketing, organization, standards-compliant design.

This, of course, breaks all the rules of blogging. Because blogs (especially those associated with your business) are supposed to be focused and topical and a bunch of other adjectives that I honestly can’t relate to. Ultimately, social media is about authenticity. And how authentic could I really be if all I blogged about was web design, development and strategy? I love my clients, I love my work, and I’m thankful every single day that I do what I do. (Seriously.) But that’s one part of me, one part of my life. There’s a whole lot more.

And if I can say so, that “lot more” is pretty cool.

Of course, this led me to need a new name for the blog. I started off trying to be clever. (Too clever.) I came up with pub and had an ohmygosh how brilliant moment. Pub is short for publish, which is what you’re doing when you’re blogging. (Obviously.) Pub is also short for publications, which is what I do for a living. And best of all, there’s the pub — as in the place you go. Because sometimes I just want to have a beer (or four), sing Auld Laug Syne and eat some mozzarella sticks. (Know what I mean?)

Clearly, I needed to go back (way, way back) to a less clever, more (you guessed it) authentic place. And that brought me to a planner that I designed in 2006. On each page, after the appointments and the to-dos, there was a spot for a “P.S. (Pretty Sweet)” — something thoughtful and lovely to complete each day. Honestly, I failed (miserably) at finishing each day on that note. But it’s a worthy aspiration, and one that I’m not quite done with.

Here’s my place for those pretty sweet things. I can’t promise they’ll be daily, and sometimes they might not be as sweet as they should be. (Like when I go on a six-paragraph rant about Adobe or Paypal or invasion of privacy, because seriously, it’s coming.) And sometimes they’ll be photos or quotes or things that are just barely longer than 140 characters. But no matter what they are, they’ll be authentic. And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty goshdarn sweet.