Started this blog 15 years ago. Here’s the traditional link to my first post from 6th Feb 2007. It’s the longest thing I’ve done consistently. It’s older than my marriage, kids and current career.
I’m not thrilled about the frequency, but it’s one of the constraints of life. The majority of my writing’s moved offline. However, this blog has helped and keeps helping me in ways I can barely detect. The most obvious is being able to communicate and build trust through written communication. The biggest benefit remains to keep me sane by giving an outlet for the voices in my head. They treat me better. I’m no use to them if I’m in a padded cell.
I’m surprised by things that haven’t changed since I started this. There’s a certain “fullness” after publishing a post I’ve spent a lot of time drafting. It’s the feeling of overeating a rice and curry lunch on the weekend. Followed by a slight twinge of guilt over indulging in something selfish.
Long-form personal blogging of the kind I do (if it even has a form) has been dead for over a decade. I don’t care. I never bothered about SEO. It’s the only form of “social” media I touch. Yes, there was a hunger for comments in the newborn days. But that is a long-forgotten age when blogging was a strangely communal experience.
Now it’s the business of talking in the dark. Practically all in that “community” have passed through the last age of the ages of blogging. Nevertheless, I remain grateful to them for the many things they have shown me about writing, thinking and communicating.
I’ll blog on until I’m dead or something convinces me to stop.
Cerno 
I am not sure if long form personal blogging is dead or moved on to other platforms.
I notice people are using Twitter and Instagram to make longer posts and I think the ability to share cross platform social media apps means there is more reach than traditional blogging.
A person I have been following on Instagram who has been writing very eloquent posts about setting up a homestead somewhere in the hinterlands of the US has just mentioned they are started on Substack. This is interesting because it is going back to newsletters!
Anyway, I am glad you keep going and it is still useful for you.
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Interesting point about Substack and newsletter. I’ve heard podcasts of people who have build a paying audience of reader via newsletters. I think the ye olde man of LK blogging herr @indica is among them 🙂
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I logged into my wordpress after like 3 years and this is the first post I read. Slightly envious of your consistency, but as you have mentioned, most of my writing happens offline these days too. The charm of pen to paper never disappears.
Hope you are having a good year so far Cerno!
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Thank you 🙂
I’m not as analogue as you are – just writing about stuff I’d rather not post here.
Hope you post some of the stuff you are writing 🙂
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