Happy birthday to my blog! I started this blog in early May 2006 as a free WordPress blog but then I moved it to Blogger on May 16th and that’s where it was until the start of this year, so May 16th is the ‘official’ start day. 13 years! And I actually had another blog before then, which I started in 2003, that’s practically ancient in internet lives. :-D
I don’t blog as often as I used to (I kinda blame the distractions on my mobile for that!) but I couldn’t imagine not having a blog. Despite reading every so often that ‘blogs are dead’, I don’t think so. But blogging has changed a lot. Of course they have. People use social media more, because it’s there, blogging kinda was social media back in the day.
Although I don’t blog as often these days, and there are a lot fewer comments (I’m as guilty of this as the next person!) etc, I love having this space that is mine and where I can share whatever I want. Whether that’s random crafty projects, new patterns or books or just stuff from my life. To be honest, the blog has always, selfishly, been for me first and foremost. There are other reasons too, of course, like sharing my work. But I blog for me. Which is why I don’t have an editorial calendar or anything like that. It is my internet home and it reflects my interests and life etc.
Every so often I think about making a calendar for this blog. “Tuesdays I can write about this, Thursdays about that” etc, but it just doesn’t work for me. So I have decided that I’m not even going to worry about that anymore. I’m going to blog when I have something to share. Maybe this inconsistency isn’t exactly what the blogging advice says you should do, but I can’t be someone I’m not. And that is also why I blog about things that aren’t craft related, like Brexit and how that is affecting my life. Because it is affecting it a lot and I don’t want to keep that to myself and pretend like life is just perfect.
It is important to me to be who I am on my blog. I’m actually more outspoken on my blog than in person because I’m pretty quiet if you meet me in person. If the blog was a…I dunno…proper professional blog it maybe wouldn’t be so smart to blog about things like Brexit but the very foundation of this blog is that it is a personal blog, it is a real human being writing it, so I reserve the right to talk about things that are important to me. Even if perhaps it turns some people off. But if some people move on because of that, I don’t mind, they weren’t “my” people anyway. If you are still here, I am very grateful that you’re reading along. :-)
Is blogging “dead”? People keep saying that it is. I don’t think so. It has just changed. That’s fine. Some of the blogs that were around when I started blogging are still there, some are not. Some I really miss, they felt like friends. And I did become friends with some of the people blogging. Which was nice. If they no longer blog, we keep in touch through other social media.
I still love blogs. They are such a great way to share and read writing in longer form. Some of my current favourite blogs are more like collections of essays. They may not post very often but the post are always worth reading.
My blog has always been a place to share my creative life. I am so happy that I have this record of (this part of) my life. When I was going through the old posts, it was so fun to be reminded of old projects, and places I’ve been.
Earlier this year when I was preparing to move the blog to WordPress and a different domain as well, I was going through old blog posts, to see which were still relevant. Some weren’t, dead links and such, and some were downright cringeworthy. I still haven’t gone through every year, but hopefully I will later this year.
It was interesting to see how my blogging has changed. In the early days, there were quite a few very short posts, they were basically tweets before I started using Twitter. Some were very short posts with just an image and a few words, so Instagram before that came along! And some were much like the blog posts you still see here. Although the photo quality has improved quite a lot! :-)
Four years ago, I wrote about 9 lessons from 9 years of blogging and they still feel like good advice, for me atleast (YMMV).
I still love blogging. Otherwise I don’t think I’d still be doing it after 13 years (16 years if you count the first blog too) if I didn’t. I love reading blogs and I love having this space where I can share and experiment and pretend like I’m a writer etc. :-) But my most favourite thing about it is the people I have met through blogging, both other bloggers and the lovely people who read my blog. I am SO happy that you’re here, it means the world to me that anyone is (still) interested in my little internet home. Thank you for being here. xx
