Something made me look at the calendar and then there was a small epiphany, kind of like one small firecracker going off.
I realized that, today, I’ve been blogging for 10 years!
Wow, 10 years. This was even before 9/11, which in some ways seems like almost yesterday. But in other ways, like when looking back to better years, it was a lifetime ago.
I’d had my website much longer than that and in 2001 there weren’t many “bloggers.” It wasn’t until about 2004 that blogging really seemed to take off.
Back then we didn’t really know “how to do it,” and we fumbled from making entries that were often too much like a personal diary: “Today I wasn’t feeling very well and had trouble going to the bathroom.” You know the ones, entries that maybe should have been kept personal rather than made global. Kind of like many Facebook and Twitter postings I see today. But that’s okay–we’re one big happy digital family.
Today, from the tweeting of the take-down of Osama bin Laden to the videos and blog entries about the nuclear incident in Fukushima, Japan, we almost have come to take these digital narratives for granted.
Note, however, that I was never one of those official “bloggers,” those folks who blog every single day, whether they had anything important to say or not. I don’t make my living from it, though I do enjoy it.
But with blogging we just knew there was something almost transformational about sharing journal entries and thoughts with your friends and family, or with anyone, really. In fact, that was a benefit–you could be anywhere in the world and people could get updates on your thoughts, activities, and status.
More importantly, other people could record their thoughts about world events, live and in person, and thereby shift the reporting of news from the venerable news anchors of that time period to the people actually witnessing and experiencing those events.
And it has never been the same since.
Today we take for granted Facebook and Twitter, and most of us have lists of other blogs we monitor regularly. Blogging brings us closer and keeps us in each other’s thoughts, no matter the distance.
Also, life is full of transitions, and one benefit of blogging is that it captures some of life’s ups and downs. Back 10 years ago I had just started a new job as a systems engineer, transitioning from software consulting and information systems studies. I then went on to academia and research in computer science and statistics, and then went on to teach statistics, data mining, and knowledge discovery in the university.
And then the transitions continue.
What will the next 10 years bring? Well, I’ll likely record much of it in my blog, so that’s one way we can share in the adventure together.
Thanks for your continued interest and support.