I have officially been blogging like a madmen for ten straight years.
I started a blog - back when this was Blogspot - on May 4, 2006 for several reasons:
- As a librarian I need to learn the blogging methods to teach instructional classes to the public about it.
- I had a background in journalism and a hobby/interest in creative writing.
- I was curious.
- I had political issues to discuss.
Originally this blog was going to be a serious, academic focus on the need for Constitutional reforms: our system of checks and balances were inadequate to the demands of the 21st Century, and our government had become unresponsive to the real needs of the citizenry.
So I started Amendments We Need, and figured I could spend an entry a week or a month to write long-winded essays of reformer ideas.
It stayed that way - with long gaps of inactivity - until December 2007, when the upcoming 2008 Presidential election grabbed my interest, and I found myself blogging too often about the general craziness - the economic downturns, the rise of Obama, the horrors of Palin, the anxiety of the age - of that election cycle
I kept the title - and old website addy - until May 2013 when I changed it to this more exotic and suspenseful Notice a Trend title. Muy sexy, no?
Man, ten years of this stuff.
I've had some crazy posts: Sharing voter turnout information to Andrew Sullivan's Dish blog back in 2008 when it meant something... Blogging about the Iranian Green uprising that turned bloody (but hopefully a sign of future freedom to that nation)... sharing work with the Lost Battalion/Horde following Ta-Nehisi Coates... the constant wait for confirming my Obama Shoelace Theory (that a Republican will go as far as to accuse Obama of unpatriotic shoelace tying)... the four years of job-hunting during the dark days of the Great Recession... getting into fights with anonymous comment posters... Having Crooks & Liars pick up the occasional entry for their Blog Round-Up, and Vagabond Scholar and Infidel753 and Tengrain and Monkeyfister and Pinku-Sensei and Clarissa and... oh man I lost track of the others sharing my links, kick me I am so sorry I forgot...
Ten years of all this.
A lot of it angry, some of it depressing, but enough of it hopeful and grateful for the future ahead for all of us.
Ten years gone, but more years ahead. And this one's not over yet. There's a lot of work to do (DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) and there never seems to be enough time, but we get by...
Did you ever really need somebody, and really need em bad
Did you ever really want somebody, the best something you ever had
Do you ever remember me, baby, did it feel so good
Cause it was just the first time, and you knew you would... - Led Zeppelin "Ten Years Gone"
And I'm 9 posts away from reaching 1000 articles.
I should break out Yes' "Tempus Fugit" next.
4 comments:
Congratulations on the anniversary! Not many bloggers keep going so long.
Oh, and the 2009 Iran uprising was far from a failure, no matter how it may have seemed at the time. It scared the theocracy enough that they allowed a fairly honest election in 2013 -- honest enough that Rouhani won and set real reform in motion. He's made a lot of progress, both internally and in relations with the outside world, despite being obstructed by a legislature full of dead-end religious crazies.
Rather like Obama, if you think about it.
Thanks for the shout-out! It reminds me that I need to link to you and quote you more often.
Your post also reminds me that another blogger I read celebrated his ten-year bloggiversary the same day you did--John Michael Greer, The Archdruid.
So many good political bloggers are now at or past their ten year marks, many of them started during/after the 2004 election, and the 2006 midterm... So happy blogiversary, and Tempus Fugit was on the album Yes was touring on the first (of the seven) time(s) I saw them.
-Doug in Oakland
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