15 Years Later and Still Blogging

Yesterday morning I awoke and like most days, took a look at my phone to see what my work day was going to bring me. (I work on the West Coast, usually there’s already been some email from East Coast coworkers by the time I get out of bed.)

One of the first thing I noticed was quite a few notifications from LinkedIn, likes and messages about my work anniversary. Which is weird, since my work anniversary is in December. Then I remembered that I also list my blog as one of my work experiences on LinkedIn, and sure enough that’s what people were messaging about.

So yeah, the little website has existed for 15 years. Blogging has gone through quite a lot since then, from being this little niche thing that a small group of people were doing, to the “next big thing”, to being dead more times than I can count. Through it all, this blog, and others, have just continued churning along. Even this blog has seen more redesigns, server moves, blogging platform changes, and so on than I can possibly count.

The anniversary also made me think back to why I even started blogging in the first place. The very first post, Oct. 9, 2001 is a perfect example. It’s simply a link to a news story about Microsoft licensing.

Yes it’s true. 15 years ago this week I simply started sharing news, information, tips, tricks, and lessons learned with anyone who wanted to read it, because I knew that there was a need for it. I knew that there were lots of people like me in the IT world who struggled to keep up with the technology we were tasked with supporting, and would benefit from having real-world IT folks simply sharing what they read and what they are learning.

Eventually, that desire to share things I was learning, and connect with other people willing to share their own knowledge, morphed into other areas of life, resulting in a blog about being a child abuse survivor, and much later blogs where I share photos from my various trips, and even one just about sports.

Obviously, at least in my own life, blogging isn’t dead. Then again, I’ve never done this to make money. I’ve never made a dime from blogging. I’ve always just done it for the fun of it, the connections with people I’ve made, and continue to make from it, and for the knowledge I’ve gained from the experience of running these sites, reading other bloggers, in comments on this site, and from the folks I simply know who I wouldn’t know had I not started this. You can say what you want about blogging, and social networks, and believe me, I’ve heard it all, but at the end of the day, there is still a need to grow these connections, there is still a need to share knowledge and information, and blogging is still a great tool to do this without fear that you’ll run afoul of the arbitrary rules of a given social network, or that the following you’ve gained there has gone away when the network goes away.

I feel good that 15 years later I’m still sharing things that help inform people. It may not have ever grown into an online multimedia empire, but it’s still fun, and there’s still a need for it, so I don’t see any reason to stop now!

Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, shared, liked, or simply smiled at me like I’m some sort of weirdo when you find out I have more than one blog.. 😉

Now go tell a friend, and help us all make new connections!

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