Sunday 2 March 2014

I think of my life as vintage wine from fine old kegs....

Ten years ago today, on a whim, I started a weblog.  I was twenty-nine years old.

Ten years represents 25% of my entire life, and some things have changed a lot in that time: I've got married, been diagnosed with a chronic, incurable illness, travelled around the world, eaten a tarantula, got a cat, installed wireless internet, bought my first mac, grown a beard....

Other things have hardly changed at all: I'm living in the same house, I work at the same place (albeit in a completely different job), I still listen to lots of music and do a lot of running....

I'm probably not the right person to ask about whether or not I've changed much as a person in that time.  If I had to guess, I'd probably say both yes and no.  Still, let's look back at that first ever tentative foray into blogging and see if we can discern anything about me from there:
Tuesday March 02, 2004
Well, this is my first ever entry.
Not quite sure what plans I have for this blogspot, but I guess we'll find that out as we go along. I've sort of been thinking about this for ages, and now I'm taking the plunge. Here we go then.

Thoughts for the day:
(1) Oh shit - I forgot to buy 30th Birthday presents for 2 of my friends who are up for a shared 30th bash this weekend
(2) Thank you Amazon!

G'f is away today. It's sort of hard to settle without her. Haven't been able to concentrate on the TV (University Challenge, Nevermind the Buzzcocks) or on my book (The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud). When I'm finished here I think I'll wash up, do some ironing (oh how domestic) and then try the book again.

Hm. I'm sure it will get more interesting than this.

Well.  Those two friends and I all turn forty in the next week or so, and I haven't got them presents for that yet either... so no change there (and I could well use Amazon when I do finally get around to it).  My wife will probably laugh at the idea that I ever did the washing up or the ironing, but she's away a lot more now and I still find it harder to settle when she's not around.

I especially love the charmingly naive belief that somehow my blogging would get more interesting over time.  Well, 2398 posts over 3652 days, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of words, and no sign of it yet!

You never know though, do you?  Maybe over the next ten years.....

A decade of blogging!  Good grief.  Who would have thought it?

11 comments:

  1. Congratulations a mighty achievement. Yours was the first blog I ever read, I was vaguely aware of the whole blogging phenomenon but it was a search along the lines of: how to roll a Camberwell Carrot that brought me to these pages. I didn't find the diagram I was after but a very level headed post about cannabis saw me read on at random with mounting amusement until I was completely won over by the post about the Muji pen.

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  2. You've just sent me to google my own damn blog to see if I can remember any of those posts. That's the problem with age and an incontinent output.... I can barely remember anything I've written. I think my favourite from the whole lot was the series we did where people sent in handwriting samples and we got someone to analyse them. I might repost that, actually. That was brilliant, and I just can't imagine either doing it now, or if I did, anyone wanting to take part. You're too kind, incidentally. I've had another raft of pen theft from my desk actually. Again, inexpensive, but I'm watching everyone I have meetings with like a hawk!

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  3. have I ever written about cannabis here?

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  4. (as opposed to on my other, much more scurrilous and entertaining secret online diaries!)

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  5. You really manage another blog, as well as this one and all the running? I'm amazed you have the time (or the energy). The weekends I suppose.

    I can never use the standard issue biros at work and always bring in my own (Pilot V ball 0.5). It often only takes a scribbled phone call note when I'm away from my desk for their fate to be sealed.

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  6. Nah - I started one once, but managed three posts before I just couldn't be bothered to cope with all the juggling. I do a bit of self-censoring here, but mostly what you see is what you get.

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  7. I also kept using the wrong ID to comment on other blogs, and it was getting ridiculous.

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  8. William Shatner does a great version of 'It Was A Very Good Year" (i realise I'm stretching the meaning of 'great' to breaking point...):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0GAjK64VZg

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    Replies
    1. referencing the title of the post obviously - also, was this whim that you used to write yr first blog post one of the early palm pilots?

      annnnyhooo - congrats on 10 years!

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  9. You know, I'd never clicked that you were also SwissTony.

    How odd.

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  10. Lyle - yeah. Got tired of an avatar chosen in haste and moved to one that was my very own. Moved 5 years ago, slightly unbelievably.

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