I’m L. Benjamin Fenton, and you should call me Ben. This WordPess blog in particular is the 8137 Productions Blog Project titled “Alpha”– “Alpha” being the experimental title. Or perhaps, the title of an experiment. Really, I’m doing this blog to get experience with this style of writing/posting, as well as to develop relationships with readers and other bloggers.
I plan to run three or more sites under the 8137 Productions moniker; in the background, I will be running this personal blog, featuring a journal of my progress as a blogger, as well as many other topics such as music, computers, political and social issues, freeware lists and blogrolls, and much more. Oh, and if you have a problem with people of color or a woman’s right to choose, you probably won’t like me.
I intend to create a very exciting and interesting forum-meets-blog that will have unique features and an awesome philosophy of conduct. I haven’t purchased domain names or copyrighted the concepts so I won’t be naming or describing it in much detail here.What I can tell you is that it will be exciting for persons (hopefully you, dear reader) who would love to have a community and forum in which people of differing social, political, cultural and other attitudes and persuasions can come together to converse, dissent and have discourse without the rampant hostility that is so characteristic of internet forums and blog comment-discussions. I have thought of a number of ways to host this environment without having to censor or control the discourse. A site like that is something that I have pined for and had absolutely no luck discovering on the internet; of course any suggestions of existing sites are welcome. I (humbly) feel that my particular ideas on this topic are worth pursuing and if nothing else, I will have a great time applying myself to the site. That’s the goal- to work my ass off and love (almost) every minute of it. If you would like to follow my progress and join in that community when I- hopefully it will be “we”- build it, just keep visiting this blog, subscribe to the RSS feed in the right-hand margin, or contact me at 8137productions@gmail.com.
I do plan on starting out with free hosting, then when I build the new site I will use paid web hosting, then later working my way into hosting on my own. For the time being, I want to pour my energy and creativity into the design and content, as opposed to using that energy for learning the technical self-hosting stuff. I have a lot to offer, and I know that I will put out some quality work in the coming months. I aim to earn my readers’ trust and confidence by offering quality, meaningful content.
Lastly, I do want to say that the purpose of this endeavor is to get to a point to where I can, at least partly, support myself by working hard at something that I love. But more than that, I want to make a living doing something that will make a positive difference. I think that once I can take care of myself financially, doing something that I love, I will be able to make a substantial contribution to the society in which I live. Often, I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer bigotry, the homophobia, the chauvinism, the ethnic and racial fear and hatred, which seethes in the fringes- and often enough, in the mainstream- in Western and global society. It’s a big world, and I don’t expect to save it. I do expect to touch a few more lives than I have yet, and I’m willing to sacrifice to do it.
If you want to get on my mailing list, write to 8137productions@gmail.com. I only send out a weekly digest, unless I do any sort of product launch- I may do two a week in that case. But I won’t spam!
Tags: 8137, 8137 Productions, 8137 Productions Blog Project, alpha, blog project, blog project alpha, courage, forum, fundraiser, goals, inspirational, Personal, political, risk, risk-taking, sacrifice, social
