The date was December 28th, 2003 (exactly ten years ago to the day, in case you hadn’t noticed). The bustle of Christmas was past, the new year had yet to arrive, and I, with the week off from work, was at loose ends and looking for something to occupy my time.
Back in those days, I spent many an hour (probably too many of them!) reading posts and interacting with online friends on the BookCrossing Forums. In the time leading up to the holidays there had been some chit-chat on the forum about a 50-Book Challenge for the upcoming year, which was being hosted on some mysterious web site known as “LiveJournal.” This site, as I discovered, turned out to be a place where anyone could sign up for a free account and keep an online diary – AKA a blog.
Unsure how and doubtful that I’d use such a thing, but caught up in a whirlwind of online friends heading over to LiveJournal to sign up for their own accounts, I decided to give it a try for myself, and tentatively posted my inaugural entry in my brand new blog.
December 28th, 2003
Here I am!
OK, so I signed up for LiveJournal today… but I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with it! I’ve heard about it over the last number of months from various people, and the idea intrigues me, but what I’m going to use it for remains to be seen…
My first entry was quickly followed by four more posts that very same day, six on the next, and three on each of the last two days of the year. Apparently I’d found a use for the site after all! From that point on I was hooked, diving head-first into the world of blogging and writing at least one post (but usually more) each day. I immediately fell in love with the whole phenomenon – the interplay with other journalers, the fun, the opportunity to write and to be read – and never looked back.
I wrote on LiveJournal extensively for several years, in my own friends-only blog as well as in a series of open-to-the-public communities I founded and administered, before setting up my first public Blogger blog (Alphabet Salad’s infancy!) and, over time, several other specialized blogs highlighting my interests in fibre arts, Italian, and so on.
As I learned more about blogging outside of the LiveJournal world, I eventually decided to move away from Blogger, go the self-hosted route with WordPress, and migrate my Alphabet Salad posts over to their current home. Then just this year, after attending two consecutive BlogHer conferences and going back and forth with myself about how I wanted to move forward with my blogging, I realized that the best way to reach my goals would be to focus my efforts and energy on just one blog. So I transferred all of the posts and comments from my specialized blogs over to Alphabet Salad (and shut down the other blogs), worked on fine-tuning my blog’s layout and content (a never-ending job, to be sure!), and also started blogging using my real name.
And here I am today.
So Happy Ten Year Blogiversary to me! It’s been an amazing ride, one which I hope I have only just begun. Here’s to my next decade of blogging!
How long have you been blogging?
How did you get started?
Please share!
