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.