10 years

I’ve had a personal website for over 11 years, the earliest posts from that are in the archives here in a category titled B.B. (Before Blog). Each page was handcrafted and typically it would take twice as long to get the post online as it took the write it in the first place.

Then, along came Blogger. A way to publish at the push of a button and, on this day 10 years ago, I did just that.

Since then a lot has changed. Which seems very obvious to say but it’s only when you sit back and think on the events of the past 10 years that I realise how different I am to the person that wrote those first blog posts.

I certainly didn’t think I’d still be writing here and whilst the quality and frequency remains very boom and bust, I don’t see me stopping. Writing, for me, is a very cathartic experience and has gotten me (and is getting me) through some very difficult times in my life; the death of my Gran, and of my mother-in-law, the stress of house moves, new jobs, and the joy of marriages and the times spent with my dearest friends. It’s also getting me through the end of my (almost) 13 year marriage but those scribbles will remain private.

I blog about my professional life and I use a blog as somewhere to store my random faffings with words and sentences.

I’ve meet many wonderful, smart, intelligent and funny people through blogging, and consider them friends. There are a few I’ve still to meet, and with the advent of Twitter I’m finding more and more people with similar views, similar outlooks and that wonderful mix of interests that so many bloggers share with many of us having similar tastes in art, music, design, religion, food, and politics. Thankfully we retain enough differences for a little friction as well.

To everyone who has visited here over the years, thank you. Thank you for your comments, for your kind thoughts and emails, for your advice and general willingness to share.

And thank you to you, my silly little blog. I probably owe you more than I realise.

There are many things about me I don’t share on this blog, many moments I keep for myself, or to protect the privacy of others (and, let’s be frank, to save my Mother any blushes), but there remains a lot of who I am wrapped up in 4, 793 posts that this blog contains. You may not always see the best of me, but that’s not the point.

A long time ago I received an email from a complete stranger. They had read something on my blog, something I’d written as a way for me to understand a not so pleasant period of my life, and they thanked me for writing it, for helping them realise they weren’t the only person in the world to go through what they were going through.

To those people who don’t understand blogging, don’t understand why someone would do it, why someone would share themselves with complete strangers I refer you to that email, to that one point of contact with a stranger which helped them. Maybe it didn’t make a huge difference, but life is so much about those moments of stillness, moments of beauty, the things that turn black to grey.

So I’ll continue to blog, continue to write about things that interest me, things that capture my attention, things which I want to capture and take things from there. If I’ve learned anything at all in the past 10 years (and some would say that’s doubtful), it’s that it no-one has all the answers and sometimes there aren’t any answers at all. Only life.

And as cheesy as it is, I’m going to end with a quote from my favourite movie as, when it boils down to it there really is only one choice to make.

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I’m choosing the former.

Comments

  1. WOOT, Gordon, WOOT! Ten years doing anything in this life is a great acheivement. Ten years blogging shows your mettle! Well done on keeping it up for so long….. one day there will be a blog post entitled “40 years, who’d have thought it”.

  2. Another in the Ten Year Club.
    Well done on reaching the milestone. It’s interesting the way that this medium has developed over time, the way that people put it to so many uses and the way that we, as individuals, change the way that we write and what we write over time. When I hear the word “blogger” used in a pejorative way (Giles Coren, bless ‘im, had a good go at food bloggers recently – although I could see what he meant to some degree), I just feel that it underestimates the breadth of blogs – being down on bloggers is like being down on books. Yes, there are some crap ones – in fact, it could be fair to say that the majority are crap or, at best, mediocre, but there are a few shining stars amongst them.

    Anyway, well done, keep it up old chap, etc. And remember the bloggers’ motto – it’s my bloody site, I’ll write what I want to.

  3. Congrats. 10 years doing anything is always pretty special. Cheesy ending but it’s your blog and you can be as cheesy as you like.

    Scary to think what 40 years of blogging will look and feel like but looking forward to finding out.

  4. In the five years that I’ve been blogging, I am pleased to have added a couple of real friends and I am grateful that you are one of them!

    I’m going to keep on writing and documenting the wild ride.

    Happy 10 years!

  5. As someone who is approaching an anniversary and how spooky that the number 40 occurs in this blog – I can truly say that I can’t believe I’ve been doing the same thing for 40 years.
    Glad to hear your writing is cathartic for you – me too but I usually write it all down then throw it away because getting it all ‘out of my head’ is all I needed. Maybe I would be shocked to read them now if I had committed them to the permanency of a computer.
    We have some of the letters you wrote (with a pen on proper paper, doesn’t that make you feel old!) while down South and we treasure them because you have the knack of writing in your own voice and we can hear it as we read. Stopping now to spare YOUR blushes.

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