There’s always something to howl about.

My life as a dog: Five years of BloodhoundBlog.

Tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of BloodhoundBlog. Here is where we started, with a question that haunts me to this very day:

If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?

At the time that we launched, Zillow, Trulia and Redfin were new kids on the block, and traditional Realtors were casting a wary eye over their shoulders. It was an interesting time to write about real estate, even though some of what I wrote in those days seems comically stoopid to me by now.

(Caveat lector: Our archives always repay effort. I could wish that someone would comb through them and pull out the true gems — the category Enduring Interest is crying out for such a treatment. But even without that helpful handiwork, if you haven’t learned everything we have taught here, you could do worse than giving our posts over the past five years your regular attention.)

I love this place, and I love the work we have done here, but I can’t revisit the history of BloodhoundBlog without some sadness — and sadness is an emotion I’ve wanted for my whole life to know nothing about. But it remains that my most important goal for this weblog — unchained Realtors — remains unfulfilled.

Too much the contrary. Most of the people who were writing in the RE.net when BloodhoundBlog was young are on the slave-master side of the table by now, either as vendorsluts, Judas goats — or both. It’s not hard for me to deplore this outcome, but none of it would be possible without the active participation of the slaves, who line up to be yoked with an ox-like complacency. Despite all the opportunities technology affords us to break free of the brokers, the NAR, the Inmannequins, et infinitely cetera, there is something about most Realtors that seems to crave dependency, subordination and the attendant exploitation.

In response to this outcome, I must admonish myself with the words I have deployed on so many other people over the years: Cultivate indifference. For five years and more, we have been just that close to smashing all the icons, ridding ourselves forevermore of the vampires who have fed on us since 1910, at the least. But: The only mind I can change is my own. The only life I can make better is my own. The only business I can rightfully attend to is my own.

And this I have been doing. I sell a lot. I list now and then. I’m building the property management business. I’m writing software when I have time, and the software I’m writing does subtle and interesting things that slide right under the radar of my competition — assuming they’re paying attention to anything, anyway. I have new things coming, and I have so many ideas that I have had to resign myself to the fact that I will probably die before I can implement even half of them. What I don’t have much of, right now, is sympathy for my fellow oxen, stolidly traipsing around in circles, grinding flour for other people’s bread.

I would that things were different, but they’re not. There is no catcher in the rye, and it is not my purpose in life to incite the fury of lemmings for committing the awful crime of rescuing them from their chosen fate. The uniquely human life is never about zero, no matter how tragic and unnecessary zero might be.

Here is what I have: I am 51 years old, and yet I have never been a day over 19 in my mind. I caught myself last week feeling particularly young, and I had to remind myself consciously of how many birthdays I have seen. I live in a home I love, and despite repeated attempts over the past three years, I haven’t managed to lose it to foreclosure. I am in love with the sexiest GILF in the world, and our marriage has never been stronger than it is right now. I’m making money, and I’m on the bleeding edge of making a lot of money. My life is not without sorrow, sad to say, but my life has always been a thing of Splendor, and that just gets better year by year.

So here’s to BloodhoundBlog at five. Here’s to dogs without chains, to oxen without yokes and to minds free to map the illimitable everything of the uniquely human life. If you are not free, I’m sorry for you. But I am as free as I can make myself, and that matters to me more than anything.

Old Bushmills, three fingers, over ice. Cheers!