Notice: I have been advised by various individuals to place this message of warning at the top of this blog post. If you do not care about the history, the evolution, or the future of my blog, I strongly dis­courage you from reading this post, as it will most likely be a waste of your time. Thank you, and enjoy this picture of a dictionary.

Drum roll, please. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for! … Okay, let me rephrase that – it’s the moment some of you have been waiting for. … Actually, now that I think of it, there probably wasn’t anyone waiting for this moment but me. But saying that this is a globally anticipated event makes me feel special. In a good way.

So, how was your day? Was it sunny? Did you eat a delicious, healthy, high-fiber breakfast? … What did you say? Did you just ask me what this drum roll deserving moment is? I knew it! All of you were waiting for this moment after all! … Okay, now I feel special. In a bad way.

Anyway, congratulations! You just read the first two paragraphs of Five Minutes in My Head, Version 3. The best part is, it’s not even called Five Minutes in My Head anymore. If you shift your eyes slightly upward (sort of like those shady individuals you find hiding under your family room couch), you’ll see that my blog is now simply called “Parker’s Blog.” The main reason for this is that far too many people asked me what FMiMH stood for, even though on all of the blog posts, I had both the abbreviation and the full name written out. For those of you that still can’t figure out what FMiMH stands for, I will tell you once and only once, so pay close attention. FMiMH stands for Five Minutes in My Head. Don’t forget to use environmentally friendly economy light bulbs.

Ironically, I’m drifting away from the FMiMH name, but drifting closer to the original concept of Five Minutes in My Head. If you’ve never read the original Five Minutes in My Head (both the first and second versions) and are too lazy to go back and read them, the core concept was that the reader would spend five minutes in my head, or more literally, five minutes in my thoughts. The intention of my blog was to get my readers to spend approximately five minutes reading my thoughts on a particular topic every day, then respond and discuss using the commenting system. Not much later, I ran out of controversial topics to talk about and ended up writing so abstractly that nobody wanted to spend the thinking power to try to understand what I was writing about or the effort and energy to try to reply to me. My popularity and appeal were declining rapidly.

In order to stop my own demise, I had a brainstorming session with myself one day during my Modern World History class. Although I failed to realize at that time that the instructor was preparing us for an in-class essay exam scheduled for the following day, and ended up going into the exam the next day with no idea what to do, I still got some good ideas for my website. I thought about what would interest readers enough to make them keep coming back for more, wanting to read what I had to say. I came up with something simple: short, funny blog posts.

Starting from the release of Five Minutes in My Head, Version 2, I spent less time elaborating and more time thinking of short, funny summaries of things that happened during my day. At first, the plan was a success. However, as time went on, I tried harder and harder to entertain my readers with things inducing short bursts of laughter, and ended up making my blog posts shorter and shorter. People needed to put zero thought into reading what I had to say. What was once Five Minutes in My Head became Five Seconds in y Head, because five sections were really enough to finish reading some days’ blog posts. I had taken my ideas to the extreme, and now they were acting negatively toward my blog.

One of the main focuses of the update to Five Minutes in My Head was to simplify the blog in ways other than content so all excess and irrelevant additions could be removed. As stated earlier, the title of y blog is now simply “Parkzer’s Blog.” Also, those of you that paid particular attention to the URL may have noticed that the date is now formatted as YYYY/MM/DD instead of YYYYMMDD. Believe it or not, people have asked me what the series of numbers at the end of the URL was because they were unable to identify the date in it. These two updates, along with a few others, minimized all distracters, reducing confusion and opening the door for an opportunity to create more in-depth content without losing people’s attentions to other random things.

Now that the format was set, it was time to find a good balance of Five Minutes in y Head, Version 1 and Five Minutes in My Head, Version 2. I couldn’t simply go back to Version 1, because they I would start losing readers out of boredom. On the other hand, I couldn’t stay with Version 2, because doing so would make it pointless to even have a blog – I could just Tweet on Twitter a few times a day, call it my blog, and end up sharing more information than I did with my blog. The solution? Keep both.

Unless I am running severely short on time, all blog posts will have a short, funny part at the beginning, and a slightly longer part after it. Those who simply want the quick laugh can read the first few lines, look at the photograph if there is one, and leave. Those who want more can keep reading and be enlightened.

So now that I wasted your time telling you the history of Five Minutes in My Head that you probably didn’t want to know about, and gave you a preview of what’s to come, go build a rocket and fly to the moon. I’ll see you tomorrow.