On November 9th, this blog turned 20 years old. That’s not a small achievement considering I’ve lost count of the number of times I almost walked away from this project. So, let’s take a moment to look back on the high-points of this effort.
Some general notes first: Every post I’ve ever written over the last 20 years is physically on THIS site regardless of where I may have originally posted them except for posts made on Facebook. I mention Livejournal several times in this post, but I will not link to them since I left there five years ago and it is mainly a Russian site now.
My first blog post was actually on the social media site, Livejournal. That post is here. The take-away from that post was that I am the audience of my writings and more than 800 posts later nothing has changed about that. Yeah, it was an egotistical statement, but those who know me know that’s me.
From 2005 to 2007, my blogging and story posting was primarily done on Livejournal. While on Livejournal, I fell in with a bad crowd (just kidding – they are great people). These people wrote fan fiction about the animated TV show: Justice League. I loved being around them because they had forgotten more about comics than I had ever known. As a result, I started writing stories too and created a large library of tales. They weren’t all literary treasures, but they 
were all mine. But, soon I started feeling uncomfortable about having Livejournal be the primary host of my work.
So, this site was born as WSAsh.net. It started out as an HTML hard-coded site using Microsoft Frontpage and it was a mess. But it served its purpose as a single spot to houses my animated Justice League fan fiction.
I moved to WordPress in 2009 as the website medium. In 2010, I created the Have Gun-Will Travel tribute page on this site in honor of one of my favorite TV programs from my childhood. In 2025, I added a tribute page to the Raymond Burr led Perry Mason TV show and placed both tribute pages under the main page heading of: My All-Time Favorite TV Shows. By 2016, the site changed from WSAsh.net to WSAsh.com.
In 2010, I posted my last Justice League story, The Script, and placed my Fan Fiction Library in stasis. In 2017, I decided I would no longer host the tales I wrote, but would point would-be readers to FanFiction.Net where my stories are now hosted.
From 2005 to 2016, I tried to keep a schedule of posting on the blog on Tuesdays and Fridays. Tuesday was reserved for political, real life and editorial posts while Friday was my designated day for fun posts and recreational TV/movie recommendations, etc. From 2005 to 2012, I wrote about the San Diego Padres (best minor league team in the majors at the time), Doctor Who, various movies and the DC Animated Universe. I also wrote about politics, the military and encouraged voting in the November elections.
In January 2017, I created the website, Ashnotes with the intention that it would follow through on its mission statement of “Hungering for Facts – Driven to Find the Truth.” It was my form of rebellion against an administration’s persistent public policy of stretching the truth and facts until they were meaningless. Sadly, I closed the site in December of that same year. Over that 12 month period, I wrote 38 posts.
That was a telling number. Between 2016 and 2020, I wrote about Mr. Trump 25 times on my main website. Contrast that to writing about Mr. Obama 11 times in the 8 year period between 2008 and 2016.
Look, 38 posts on Ashnotes in one year was simply too much for me. I felt like I was bailing water off the deck of the Titanic using a teacup. Ashnotes closed down for my own mental health, but I still do feel bad about this failure.
One thing you’ll notice is that there is no advertising or banner ads on the site. Oh, there was a period where I had banners and advertising and to my surprise, some months it actually paid the bills. But most months it didn’t. Frankly, I didn’t have the kind of control I wanted over advertisers and their content, so I stopped having advertising on the site. And honestly, I don’t regret that move at all despite the expense.
Since my retirement and move to the Southeastern United States, my writing has been sporadic. However, I’m proud that I managed to maintain a schedule (particularly since January of this year) of every two weeks. In fact, I have written more posts this year than I wrote in 2019 and 2020 combined.
Except for my annual end of year post in December, this will be my last blog entry for 2025. Thanks to all for being with me during the last 20 years. Sadly, I know I don’t have another 20 years in me, but I think I can safely say this site will be here next year.
So, here’s to the future.
