When I started this blog a decade ago, it was as an outlet for all of the thoughts that were screaming to get out of my head. It was barely a year after 9/11, Quebec had a wildly unpopular PQ government, Israel was reeling from some of the worst years of the second intifada, I was a recent graduate from a university where campus tensions were at an all-time high, and I felt like I had things I needed to say.
Blogging was a relatively new method of communication at the time. It took off like wildfire because it provided a quick and easy way to frequently update a website. Before I launched the blog (on Blogger at the time on a Geocities domain, no less), I had a website that was coded by hand, in HTML written in Notepad of all things. I’d posted a number of rant-style “thoughts”, but the update process was cumbersome. And nobody much was reading it.
Then, I discovered blogs written by people who were saying smart things about the issues I cared about. Blogs not only provided commentary, but they provided interaction via commenting and trackbacks. It was an early form of social media that created community and led me to discover others — some like-minded, some on other side of the fence — who wanted to discuss, debate and analyze.
I wrote my inaugural post without expecting much. Ten years, 2,500 posts, more than 6,000 comments and countless friends, contacts and connections later, this blog’s still going. But much has changed. I’ve migrated from a hosted Blogger solution to my own WordPress, added my own domain name, and refreshed the look and feel (though it’s overdue for another facelift).
The world has also changed. In 2002 there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. This blog was the outlet for a lot of those random thoughts, one-off posts, links and amusing images. Today, those social channels have become much more efficient means of sharing that type of content. I blog much less frequently today. Back in 2002 I was posting several times a week or even a day, but now I might post a few times a month, if that. My posts have become lengthier, because the shorter posts tend to be tweeted or shared to my Facebook page instead.
The topics of conversation on the blog have also changed. I’m a decade removed from the happenings at Concordia and can’t really comment on them anymore, and Israeli and Mideast politics make me weary and depressed so I don’t post as much on the subject anymore. These days, I focus much more on Canadian and Quebec politics — and when there’s no lockout, hockey.
Very few of the people on my blogroll from back in ’02 are still at it. Independent blogs have largely been swallowed up by larger corporate-funded media outlets. Some of the early bloggers became media celebrities, journalists or social media gurus. Others have moved onto other things. I have a lot less time these days and I blog in multiple places, so my attention is certainly divided.
But from time to time, this space still serves its original purpose as an outlet for the things I have to say. Even if those things have changed, too.
Ten years. If you’ve been reading since the beginning, thanks for sticking with me. And be sure to check out the Hall of Fame for some trips down memory lane.
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