Hi.  ***PLEASE NOTE*** If you are new to this site, you have reached the 'Home' page of a full service website.  The following is a long winded introduction about what I'm trying to do here, and is NOT the actual 'Blog'.  Please look up to the top right of the screen and if using a mobile device you will see some lines that if you hover on will show you the sections of the blog site.  If you use a tablet or old fashioned desktop PC like me you will find tabs for the actual 'Blog' page along with some pictures in the 'Gallery', and yet even more information about yours truly if you can stand it in the 'About' section.  Thanks!

Welcome to lifeinthetalllane.com (ironically, “LITTL” for short), the online presence of yours truly, long-time television and media production professional, dad, husband, musician, runner and who knows what else Preston Swigart.  Add to that a couple new terms recently introduced to me, that of "dadblogger", and also the fact that I'm not vertically challenged.  More about all that later.  Here you will find my highly acclaimed (at least in my own mind) blog for starters, and anything else that may eventually pop up in the way of new and modern ways to communicate.  Eventually this site will live inside my new website northendmediaLTD.com as I work to rebrand and modernize my corporate image as well as create a more personal and comprehensive online space.  For the present this site will exist on its own.

Being painfully aware that a blog these days is pretty much old hat, I will focus on hopefully refining the now ancient art of blogging.  After all, blogging has now been around how many years? 5 or 10?  Certainly mature and established, but reasonably new to me, at least in practice.  I hope I might find a somewhat unique voice that hasn’t been pounded into people through the seemingly infinite amount of cyberspace gobbledygook already out there.

As I've brainstormed on how best to present this publicly, I have sometimes wondered if perhaps I should just skip the old fashioned art of putting letters and words on a page or screen and just fast forward right to video blogging or 'vlogging'.  Certainly that is where my area of expertise lies. I suppose that could be down the line, if I could get used to the idea of seeing my own craggy face on camera, that is. I also think my voice sounds kind of weird whenever I hear a recording of it.  At this point anyway there is still some magic in the actual act of writing to me, and doing stuff with video is a little too much like work, at least for the time being.  Although I love and embrace modern technology and all that it brings, I am still at heart pretty old-fashioned.  In this modern day writing environment filled with LOLs, WTFs, and all kinds of other modern word variations that bring horror to a self proclaimed writing traditionalist, I still cling to the sanctity of a written word, hopefully spelled correctly, completely, and put down in the right order. MAYBE even with the appropriate punctuation thrown in for good measure.  Join me, and together maybe we can blissfully return to the days of 'you're'. (YES I meant to say it that way!!!)  This is what I do for fun. I hope my high school English teachers would be proud.  Shout out to Mrs. McCann and Mrs. Moore, I hope you're out there somewhere.