ten
Some days ago I posted a photograph taken in Toronto in December 2000. It wasn't the post I had intended to put up here, but neither is this one. I did intend to write it, but then I remembered I'd actually already written it - over two years ago. I thought I'd dig out the old file, and post that, with a few changes, but I can't find the bloody thing on my computer because I can't remember what I named it, and none of my searches have turned it up. The other trouble is that I'm not really sure of the exact date of the occasion the post was supposed to be marking. All I remember is that it was the second week I stayed in Toronto, because that was the week I stayed at Stacy's, which would have made it somewhere around the third week of December 2000.
That was the week I created my first blog, hiding out in Stacy's apartment one cold and snowy night. (I think it was the same day I got lost walking around in a snowstorm, having become literally snowblind, and unable to recognise any of the landmarks that I passed, which would explain why we had opted to stay indoors that evening, setting up a blog instead of meeting up with more friends.)
I started my second blog a few days into January 2001, having already forgotten my password to the first one. Between then and now, I've actually lost count of all the blogs I've actively contributed to, and it's hard to go back and find out because so many of them died or got deleted (yes, blogs die).
So this isn't the post about the history of my ten years' blogging. There are some things I remember about blogging culture, as it was back in the early days, like the sheer living-in-the-future excitement of seeing the "recently updated blogs" on blogger.com updating in real time rather than once every four hours (I know it doesn't seem like much these days, but back then it was a Big Deal). Or the often surreal entertainment value of search results statistics, and how we'd check them every day to see what new hilarity was there; or to see whether anyone had commented via their own blogpost, or search engine request, because most of us didn't have built-in commenting. As much as I like built-in comments, I sort of miss the days when we didn't have any and had to find innovative ways to communicate- I rarely look at my webstats these days: they're so dull. I remember putting in hidden messages to clever readers, that could only be found by viewing the source code, or by mousing over the right word, and how most blogs didn't have any images because there were no sites where you could host pictures for free.
Then there was the weird rivalry/snobbery between those who used Blogger and those who used Livejournal, although I never really understood it, because it seemed silly to me to proscribe restrictions to a burgeoning medium that was constantly evolving, and I couldn't see much difference between them, anyway, at least when viewed across the board. (Ironically, despite many bloggers' snobbery and dismissal of the LJ platform, it was actually Livejournal which was the early adopter for much blogging innovation we take for granted now, such as comment streams or syndication, with all the other platforms taking a while to catch up.)
So this is the post to mark my ten years as a blogger and, even if some times during that time I took extended breaks from blogging, and even if most of what I wrote is no longer available to be read, I'm proud to stand up and be counted.
I'm not going to link to significant posts in the various archives of those blogs that are still online, and I'm not going to list all the reasons why blogging made my life better, as other people have done. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that everything I could list was something I'd discovered - or could have discovered - through other online activities: things like mailing lists, message boards, and Twitter.
Ah yes, Twitter. I don't do much looking at mailing lists or message boards anymore, and I don't even seem to do much blogging anymore, but I do like Twitter. In fact, using it feels like the old days of blogging (and the old days of message boards and mailing lists, let's be honest). I've seen people discover it for the first time and they have the same sense of wonder and warmth and community that was there at the early days of blogging. (It's probably no coincidence that the man responsible for Twitter's popularity was the same man who was responsible for for the popularity of blogger.com)
I wonder whether, in ten years time, I'll be writing a half-arsed post about still being on Twitter? (or seven years time, actually, since I've already been on Twitter for over three years) I guess, to quote an inevitable cliché, time will tell.