Welcome to my blog

Life is changing inside this 103-square-mile city.
North Port has more than doubled its population in the last four years, surpassing 50,000 residents. The median age dropped to 38, making it the youngest community in Southwest Florida (to compare, the median age of our neighbors, Port Charlotte to the south and Venice to the north, are somewhere in the high 60s and low 70s). North Port also has more than 9,000 school students. We are getting our second middle schoool. We already have four elementary schools and a high school. District officials are discussing when to build the city's fifth elementary school.
But with dozens of new rooftops, lagging behind is the needed commercial space, parks, road repaving projects and sidewalks and bicycle lanes.
This city is in the midst of transitioning from a sleepy retirement town to a metropolis. And I happen to live right here in the center of it.
So, the focus of this blog will be on life in North Port and the rest of Southwest Florida, based primarily on the idea of a "placeblog" (a term conceived by Lisa Williams, creator of Placeblogger.com and one of the experts in the citizen journalism). I likely will not be following City Commission meetings, lecturing about what I think this city should be doing or not doing or getting heavily involved in the politics of this town. Instead, my blog will be about my life - as just an example of what life is like inside North Port... a sort of first-person account of what walking into the Wal-Mart here is like. What do I see, what do I smell, what do I hear? And is Wal-Mart a reflection of what the people of North Port are like?
But I also might delve into the topic of our changing media. Afterall, the industry is changing at a rapid pace. Is that good or bad? Newspapers are either selling to the highest bidder, undergoing massive staff layoffs or completely shutting down. And, seeing that my career happens to be impacted by that new trend, this will be place that those types of issues may also come up.
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I will writing. Feel free to comment. Tell me your stories about North Port. Do you live here? Have you ever been to Southwest Florida? Or maybe your town is growing and changing a lot like this city. I look forward to hearing your feedback and being a part of that conversation with you.
-Flawritergrl