Anniversaries.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in the news. 

Tomorrow marks eighteen years - eighteen! - that Princess Diana died; which subsequently also marks the day that I moved into my freshman dorm at Boston University.  Eighteen years since I left home. Unbelievable.

Last week, my nephew turned one.

Earlier this month, on August 3rd to be exact, my blog turned ten years old.  Ten!  Ten years of blogging. How did that happen?
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Here Goes Nothing!

The other day, I was complaining to a girlfriend about how bored I get at my current job...I told her my favorite anti-boredom task was to check my boyfriend's sister's blog. She asked if I was so bored, why didn't I start my own blog?
Hmm..she has a point.

So here I sit, hesitantly ready (how much more will I rely on computers now?!) to start my own blog. I justify it by knowing it'll help me escape boredom at work (yey!) and hope it will enhance my writing capabilities. And hell, it'll be fun to look back at one day when I'm old, grey, and senile right?

And so it begins...

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How do these days, these months, these decades flash past us as quickly as they do?  When I started this blog a decade ago, the majority of my friends didn't even know what a blog was - they'd never heard the term before I emailed them to announce my site.  Truth be told, the internet was still kind of a new "big deal" ten years ago.  I'd only just finally caved and purchased a cell phone two years earlier in 2003.  Imagine that life!

I landed in this blog world right as the Mommy blogging movement was gaining momentum, before fashion blogging was genuinely a thing, years even before BlogHer was truly on the radar.  People weren't paid to blog when I started writing, advertisers and marketers weren't chasing down hits or trending items or wooing bloggers with promises of money or freebies if they would promote items.  I never thought I'd say something like this, but it was a far simpler and more innocent time in the blog-o-sphere.  People wrote and posted for writing and postings sake.  They told stories. They invited us into their lives, their worlds.

As evidenced by my very first post, I started blogging on a whim for two very simple reasons.  #1 - I was bored to tears at my job.  #2 - I wanted some sort of external motivation and drive to write beyond simply willing myself to keep up with my handwritten journal.  I felt if I knew real living and breathing humans were actually reading my words I might be inclined to write more, to write better.  (Ahem.  Even if it was just my parents who actually did the reading.)  As it turns out, I was right on both accounts.  My blog kept me occupied during said boring job and I found myself writing on a much more regular basis.  For years I didn't think my writing was actually improving all that much; though now I look back and re-read some of my very initial posts and think...oh, wait.  I actually did get better, my writing grew stronger. Turns out those folks who tell you the only way to get better is to practice are on to something. 

I certainly did not expect to keep writing on the blog as long as I have though.  After all I named the first iteration Roaring Through My Twenties! (Because what 25 year old ever thinks they are going to one day actually arrive at 30?)  There was a brief period of time, when blogs were starting to explode, that I toyed with the idea of trying to monetize my blog.  The impetus behind such thoughts was purely due to the fact that I felt utterly broke all of the time.  (Remember what it's like to live on a 25 year old's salary in a city?) In the end though, I decided I wanted to keep my little blog pure, simple, and completely for me. We don't always make the best decisions in life; and I personally feel we can be particularly susceptible to poor judgement in our twenties.  However, that decision to keep this piece of the internet solely by me and for me?  That was a damn good call.  This little blog of mine is and has always been just that.  A snapshot and record of my days, random though they may be.  I don't have some fancy template or site design and I may not have hundreds of thousands of followers, but I genuinely do not care.  I started this blog for me.  And I've kept it for me.  Some of you have been along on the ride for the whole ten years together.  I'm glad you're here; I'm happy you keep coming, I am glad we are friends - in real life or in the interwebs.  I like it here and I hope you do too. 

I have always been an anniversary marker; I keep notes of special dates and moments in my yearly planner.  And while I am a firm believer in moving forward - always moving forward - I think it's important now and again to take a long healthy glance backward, reflecting on where we have come from and what we have seen.

So here's to those ten years in the blog-o-sphere and the adventure I have been on, otherwise entitled my life.

Here's to the next ten.  And all that may await.