Hi EM!
I'm afraid to say you've got the wrong forums in a way, because this is for the Dungeon Master game released way back in 1987
Still, for D&Ding, while I know you are a 3.5 person, apparently the 4th ed DMG is brilliantly written with a huge amount of advise for the DM. If you have any friends who might have made the switch, then it would certainly be worthwhile borrowing it.
I think the important thing is to remember that you are creating a joint story with your friends. Certsainly the onus is on you to give a framework and content, but do not feel you are alone. This is a joint story. Your job is to be very prepared for that night's gaming session to make it go as smoothly as possible. And also to be firm, fair and flexible to provide an enjoyable gaming session. As a veteran player, yopu probably already have memories of good and bad gaming sessions, of which DMs made a good atmosphere and which stifled the fun or creativity in some way.
As a DM, what you aren't there to do is all the creative and dramatic heavily lifting. Certainly, you are not there to railroad the players into a world of your own devisiing, which puts a tremendous pressure on you. As a player I am guessing alot of the fun was exploring the world, but jsut as much was exploring your character, and watching that character shape individual conversations and then the world around them.
I think you need to split the game world of your mind into 'firm hints' and then into hidden 'cool ideas'. The blog you have created sounds great, Don't go into too much depth in your mind. Create a very broad atlas of the world, realistically what a player's character would know or could easily find out with some research. Your job as a DM is to make them mysterious or make them intriguing. Have the player come up to you and go 'ooh, I liked the sound of that desert land on the blog...is it like an egyptian themed area? That would be cool to see that at some point. My character probably had a desert nomad history...' etc. That way, you can then expand that area in further sessions confident your ideas are goign in the way the players would want.
Conversely, an area you might love may well get ignored by the players. You probably blown through or circumvented campaign settings of your own DMs like this I am sure! If you have put alot of creative effort into that, then that will be irritating for you and will have been a waste of time as a DM. It would surely be best to leave any ideas you love as just that - ideas. Create a list of things that would be cool - racial quirks, potential characteristics for a villian, plots, etc.
The secret of many cretaive things are that the ideas are the best, shiniest, most fun part. If you front load your preperation as a DM with fully realising the creative stuff, then you are probably going to railroad the players and meanwhile miss something mechanical. And, of course, you will have blown the really fun part of the night's session already!
I think your preparation should be to certainly give a framework, but make it a loose framework for all your creative decisions. Do you have encounters planned, combat or otherwise? Certainly assign a few adjectives to each character. Certainly sketch in a couple of ideas of what would be fun character interactions (cowardly boss and too intelligent underling). However, leave it that loose. Even for big RP encounters, definitely have the character in your mind, again give yourself maybe five helpful adjectives to work with as a framework, but keep how the encounter should go loose. Even the plot of the campaign should be a series of bullet points of plot, not a connected descision tree.
With the creative framework existing but very felxible, you can on the fly enjoy what your players do, and let what your players do basically write alot of that night's story. They should enjoy it if they are shaping it, given the restrictions of your framework, and hopefully you should enjoy it since you are not coming up with the story and enjoyment yourself.
Meanwhile, that leaves you a little freer to do he important mechanical preparation. I think this is the most important part. For combat, make sure you have mechanical descriptions for any quirks a character has. Ok, you want perhaps an insane underline. What mechanically does that mean? +2 to hit and damage but -2 to AC? Does a certain boss coup de grace if they have the chance? Does a cautious enemy use defensive fighting? Are the soldiers of the guard trained to keep hold of their weapons and get a disarm bonus? If a character is fearful, what does that equate to as a bonus on attack if the party take advantage of that - +1 pr +2? Etc etcFirm up your encounter DCs without assigning creative reasons for them - make sure you cover DCs for a range of possibilities in broad strokes, so you can happily fit a weird creative solution into one of those DCs without thought.
For example, say you have an encounter planned with a blocked door, with a guard behind it. You would certainly assign a few fun adjectives - officious, cowardly, patriotic - tyo him, and maybe flesh out what you imagine his character would sound like, and act like. Certainly, know what plot point the opening of this door is supposed to lead to. However, there it should end, you should not plan exactly the call and response to that situation, nor have how opening the door and the room beyond precisiely explains the plot.
What you should do is then map out important mechanics. DCs and skills for the character - Bluff, Diplomacy, hp, weaponery, hp level at which he would stop fighting (if he would fitht at all) etc. And certainly the DCs of the surroundings - perhaps DC for a hidden door trap to spot and to disarm. Hp for the door. Thickness of the walls and door for listening checks. You might then assign broad categories for what influence the party has - the DC reduction or increase to disarm if the party damage the door for the trap, the DC reduction in spotting it, etc. Perhaps intimidate skills etc have a penalty if the party appears less threateneing, etc.
Then, for the encounter you don't have to be constantly worried and book-keeping, you have all the information to hand you need, and instead the encounter can be driven, under your firm framework, by the party. IF the anticipated call and return of the party and guard tuyrns into your fighter instantly attackign the door, you aren't thrown into a panic, you have a flexible set of mechanics to respond to that, and you can instead have fun interpretting your loose creative guidelines into spontaneous lines and actions by the guard, driven by the players.
Umm, ok, that was a long post, sorry. Hope it helps in some way! I'd certainly recommend going onto wizard's own website, and looking for their online magazines and even podcasts. Tehre are the occasional good discussions of DM stuff, and some of the podcasts are good - especially the Penny Arcade series of podcasts showing a live game, as undertaken by good DMs up against some very strong personalities!
Good luck! Have fun!
Edit: Oh, and to make a long post even more long - have the players track what the player's want to track. As long as people are having fun, they will forgive the initial fudges, and the on the fly 'hmm, I guess you didn't eat for a few days but haven't recorded your meal usage - let's say you are fatigued' on the fly rulings. Try to get the players to detail things to start with, then you can spot what they find boring and what, in their case, is slowing play. If it is important, you will know what you need to track yourself. You may even be able to streamline some of their record keeping.
Don't be afraid to use cards for things like initiative order, tokens to denote conditions on the party or on a character, etc. Anything that keeps writing down, and gives visual clues, is good and of course is m,uch faster than note taking.
Edit edit: Oh, and remember the golden rule of DMing - say 'yes'. You aren't against the party, you are all together to create a story. Let them do things, even if you then warn them of the potential perils or of the impediments. It's up to them to decide to go ahead or not. It's not that they can't try to cut someone's hand off. It's jus tthat until the character has single digit HP it might be impossible, and there might be a -4 to the attack rolls. Still, if you allow it, you might get a fun RP thing where the enemy starts getting scared about this evil person trying to lop off their hands, and perhaps surrenders, runs away on half HP, starts getting a penalty to his own rolls and doesn't notice the other player's movement,s, etc. And hey, you might allow the hand cutting off instead of a death when the enemy gets to negative HP.
Ok, now I'm talking to much!
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. And I told my dad and he's gonna come too. Woot, I can finally have a go at some tabletop gaming 
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