What This Blog Is

 Roughly ten years ago, I was posted up with my friend Don at the bar of Longman & Eagle, a Michelin-Starred Chicago restaurant that we would use as a place to drink whiskey and loudly engage in obscene wordplay. I was explaining that while I try to “be myself” around my family and other members of polite society, I tend to not discuss…

“Your checkered past.”

Don had finished my thought for me, as he often did.

The phrase “Citizen Steve and his Checkered Past” tickled us, so we riffed on it until it had been exhausted. I vowed to make it the name of my solo music project, assemble a backing band (“His Checkered Past”), book a small Midwestern tour, and release an eponymous debut album.

Yeah, I never did any of that.

So I’ve sat on that project name for a decade. And now that albums are obsolete, and my habit of burning bridges has left me with no collaborators to join that backing band, and I’m loath to briefly visit the Midwest let alone book a small tour there, I figure I’ll put the name to use. And I see no better use than to take a look back at myself a decade ago and ponder, “What was I doing?”

I mean that literally. What was I doing this week ten years ago? What was going on in Chicago, where I lived then? What was going on in the country? The world? Wisconsin?

So with the help of Facebook and my friend Pat’s Chicago Public Library login info, I intend to look back precisely one decade, once a week, and take a glimpse into my Checkered Past.