When I returned to WordPress last weekend, I mentioned that I had been re-treading a familiar path between blogging platforms. From self-hosted WordPress, through the sadly missed Posterous, across Tumblr, Blogger, and finally to WordPress.com. If anybody described a “wanderer” in the blogging community, they would surely have be describing me.
I never seem to have “found my place” online. The memberships of social networks are swept into unruly piles in the corners of the browser cacheFacebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Posterous, Disqus, and more. Too many places to possible frequent on anything like a regular basis. I’ve become a kind of Gandalf, vanishing for generations and then turning up at people’s doors without warning to start another adventure, full of enthusiasm each time, but never really trusted to stick around.
When all is said and done, I need somewhere to write. Somewhere to record. The addition of “social” to so many platforms had caused me to lose sight of why I have written so much online in the past. I have often argued that the words, stories, and memories I record are both for my children, and for future generationsso they might know who I once was, what I thought about, and what my hopes and dreams might have been.
You see, I am one of the old guard. A “real” blogger. I’ve been writing online in one shape or another for nearly ten years. My words have travelled the world aboard most of the popular platforms during that timefrom hand written HTML files, to PHP scripts, LiveJournal, Vox, Blogger, TypePad, WordPress, Posterous, Tumblr… over three thousand posts. Something in the region of half a million words. When I returned to WordPress, I deliberately chose to draw a line in the sand at the beginning of this year. A chance to sweep the floor, to re-invent, and to reprise who I might be.
This week has been interesting. After emptying my evenings of so many of the commitments that had brought my contribution to the blogging community to a standstill, it feels like a tap has been turned - what was once a trickle has become a torrent. Once again I am emptying my head into the computer screen - recording the minutiae, the silly, the (hopefully) interesting, the amusing and the mundane. Most importantly the mundane.
Everything is interesting to somebody. Isn’t it?