Call it self-knowledge, call it a hunch, call it moderately decent long-term memory. Whatever it was, I suspected there was some important date coming up early this year and I was right: today is the fifth anniversary of my first public blog entry. Yes, five years of blathering, bleating, and sometimes being profound. A lot has changed in five years.
The tech, for one thing: I started with Movable Type and switched to WordPress. I like the control it gives me. After all, one of the reasons this is still fun is that the blog engine is just a big toy.
I’m older (that’s sort of a given) but I’m also wiser: there are fewer things of which I am sure but I am truly sure about them; I ask more questions than I used to and base fewer of my observations about the world on preconceived notions. At least I hope I do.
I’m also happier. I happen to be the proud owner of a pair of bespoke socks. I don’t know why but that makes me inordinately happy; not just that I have them and they fit my feet and only my feet but also that someone loved me enough to make them.
I’ve written three novels, four really if you count the 86,000+ words of fan fiction I wrote between September 2003 and August 2007. Yes, consider this my coming out party: I’ve written fan fiction and some of it was damn good, and the stuff that wasn’t good was at least spell-checked and uses the apostrophe correctly.
I’ve written a lot about depression here and while that will be a life-long struggle for me I can truthfully say, despite major blows and blunders, that life is (mostly) good.
Yet, what I write here has less exposure than at any time in this blog’s history if the number of comments I get is any indication. I’m not sure, though, that this is a bad thing.
The simple truth is that I write here because I need to. If what I write is read, and the people who read it get some benefit from it, all the better.
In an online world where blogging has become the norm, or it’s passé it just depends on who you ask, I don’t think I’ll be moving my life to Facebook any time soon. I am, however, looking forward to what the next five years brings.
And that, for me, makes all this worth the time even if the mic isn’t on or even plugged in.
ooo, what fandom did you write for? I love reading fanfic but have never dared write one in case I don’t get the voices right for the characters. Plus, I’m too lazy. 🙂 But I always like an epic.
I wrote for two, actually, Law & Order: SVU and Birds of Prey (that was the whopper…and incredibly a very short-lived show). All femslash. Yes, it’s like that.
Someone said (maybe Flannery O’Connor, but I’m not sure) “I write in order to know what I think.” I could also say that I write to make myself think – to force the reflective part of me to take notes, and not just let insights slide back under the surface.