A year ago today, Too Shy to Stop was born. I had just finished my first year of graduate school, and I was going to spend the summer in New Jersey, interning at a publishing company just outside of New York City.  My boyfriend at the time challenged me to keep a blog and update it daily.  I wanted to prove that I could.

I didn’t want to start a blog until I could find a good name for it.  One evening, I was flipping through poetry anthologies on my bookshelf and found “In the Waiting Room“, a poem by Elizabeth Bishop.  I fell in love with the phrase “too shy to stop” because of its alliterative qualities and also because I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant.

On May 15th, I wrote my first post: Free Iced Coffee Day and Saigon House.  Saigon House was a restaurant in East Hanover, NJ, but it closed shortly after I wrote this entry.  I’m rather embarrassed to share this post, but I want readers to see our website’s humble beginnings. I should clarify that the original layout was much different, and the blog was originally hosted at http://tooshytostop.wordpress.com, which no longer exists.

For most of the summer, I wrote entries about restaurants, movies, plays, books, and nail polish.  Too Shy to Stop kept me busy and productive, and it gave me a creative mental break from my office work.  At the end of the summer, I moved back to Maryland to begin my second year of graduate school, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to produce the same kind of content.

I can’t remember what inspired the idea, but I decided to post an ad on Craigslist to recruit other writers in the DC metro area.  A few interested writers responded to the ad, and they began contributing too.  When I look back at this, I can’t believe that anyone would want to contribute to my amateurish and very self-absorbed blog, but I am grateful for their enthusiasm.  At that point, editing and contributing to Too Shy to Stop was a great outlet for me, and I found that I loved doing it.

My own interest quickly blossomed, and I decided that I would have to redesign the website if I wanted to be taken seriously.  I loved using Wordpress as a content managment system, and I was sure that I should find a web designer or programmer who was a Wordpress expert.  I submitted a query on a professional Wordpress listserv, and I received a number of responses.

One of my main qualifications was that the person I hire live in the area, but a response from Bill Erickson in Texas caught my eye.  He was young, ambitious, very talented, and he impressed me with his e-mail.  He also happened to be traveling to the DC area that same month, and I agreed to meet him.

To make a long story short, I flew to Houston in November to spend a weekend with Bill and the talented team from Always Creative to brainstorm the website redesign.  The new website would launch by the new year.

Excited about the new layout, I wanted to host a New Year’s Eve party to celebrate the launch.  I decided to have the party in New York City because it is a central location and chose Stain bar as the venue.  From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, I found bands to provide entertainment and sponsors to provide food and door prizes.  The generous talent and businesses that donated their time and energy did so in exchange for advertising space on our event website, Too Shy Oh Nine.

The new website went live on January 9th, and I began an aggressive recruiting process, using Ed2010 and other journalism networking websites.  Since then, we have been building our content base and our identity, and we’re trying to decide how we fit into the new media movement and decide what makes us distinctly different.

I am so proud of and grateful for everyone that has helped with this website, and I am so happy that I can pour my passion into this project.  Finishing my thesis these past two months took a toll on my ability to give as much time and energy as I wanted, but I have renewed enthusiasm.

Happy first birthday, Too Shy to Stop!  I can’t wait to celebrate more birthdays with you.