#oneaday Day 411: Blogiversary

It is, according to WordPress, the 17th anniversary of me signing up for WordPress and starting this blog. This was not my first blog, but it is, by far, the one that has stuck around the longest, in that it still exists. I don't think any of my other blogs are still online, though several of them are archived in the Wayback Machine.

In my first post on here, I explained that I signed up with WordPress so I wouldn't have to rely on, I quote, "crappy, shit-arsed web hosts who don't reply to my emails when I politely (and subsequently, less politely) enquire exactly why they have absconded with £30 of my hard-earned for another year's hosting and domain name ownership". I can't remember the exact circumstances that surrounded this, but it would have been one of my previous self-hosted websites, which I had a domain name for.

Now, 17 years later, this blog is once again self-hosted, after an incident that is well-documented on this site. If you weren't around for that, the short version is that this site got mistakenly flagged as spam by WordPress.com's automated AI-powered bots, and rather than contacting me to enquire if, you know, everything was all right, they just shut the whole thing down — and, to add insult to injury, when your site has been shut down for supposed "terms of service violations", as in this case, you're not actually able to post in the Support forums to get an explanation.

It took multiple angry emails (very angry emails) to WordPress to get them to reinstate my site… which I then promptly uprooted and moved here. My traffic has been a fraction of what it once was ever since, but eh. On this site in particular, I don't really care; this place has always been my own personal little haven where I write what I want, and it's never been about getting people to read it. As perhaps exemplified by the fact I don't really share what I write about here; some people who have been hanging around for a while still read because they're still subscribed via email or RSS or whatever, and the rest of the Internet doesn't really know I exist. Honestly, I'm kind of fine with this.

I have changed a lot since that first post in 2008. I've been through a divorce and remarriage, I survived the COVID years, I've been through several different jobs and… well, frankly, it hasn't been an easy ride at all, for a whole mess of reasons you'll have to delve back into the archives to find out more about. But one near-constant in all that nonsense was this blog; even when I wasn't posting here daily, it was comforting to know that it was somewhere that I could come when I needed an outlet. And in some respects, it's nice to be able to look back on times gone by — good and bad — and reflect on how things have changed over the years.

There are things I regret, absolutely. There are also things I had little to no control over. On the whole, I'm in a mostly better place now than I was then — and especially during a particularly dark time in 2010 — though there are other ways in which life was better, simpler, back then. I certainly wasn't getting annoyed about AI back in 2008, and social media certainly didn't feel quite as toxic as it does today.

One thing hasn't changed since that first post, though, and that is the fact that I am "constantly shaking my head at the rancid, disgusting, despicable state that this country is in". How little I knew. If only I knew that things were going to get much, much worse nearly 20 years later.

Because they are fucking worse, aren't they? Not only is late-stage capitalism destroying lives on a regular basis, we have an insane paedophile rapist in the most powerful office in the world, we've taken about a million steps back in terms of not being racist, homophobic and transphobic, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and no-one knows how to behave like a decent human being any more because they spent all their fucking time staring at TikTok instead of interacting with other people.

Still, this blog will remain a constant. And, in these challenging times, that thing about it being a helpful outlet for me rings especially true!

Happy birthday, blog. Thanks for listening.

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2091: Singular Sensation

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In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Singular Sensation."

"If one experience or life change results from you writing your blog, what would you like it to be?"

I've talked about how this blog is helpful to me personally on a number of occasions in the past. It's an outlet, mostly, albeit one I've chosen to make public as a means of sharing "who I am" with the rest of the world. You may like what I say, you may hate it, you may judge me harshly or you may empathise with the things I'm saying, but you can be certain that everything I write here is the honest truth at all times, warts and all.

And, to be honest, I've already had experiences and life-changing results from writing this blog, though I didn't necessarily know what effect I was having at the time. My particularly tough year back in 2010 is something I keep coming back to, but I don't mind admitting that sitting down and getting some thoughts down on "paper" on this very site each day helped me through the worst of a terrible situation. It didn't immediately resolve anything, but it at least gave me the chance to feel like I was able to express the many, many conflicting feelings swirling around in my head at the time.

And this is something I still keep in mind when I write something here every day now. I write from the heart, without particularly planning things out or attempting to compose something with good structure; instead, this is a scratch pad for random thoughts, a place to jot down memories so I don't forget them, a place to enthuse about the things I love and a place to rant about the things I hate. I do try not to stick to the same topic all the time, but you know what people are like — everyone likes what they like, so even with the best of intentions, I know that I inevitably find myself drifting back towards the things I enjoy writing about the most.

Actually, my occasional adoption of these writing prompts from The Daily Post is an attempt to mix things up a bit; the prompts aren't always particularly appealing or relevant to me, but when they are, they can providing a good starting point for something to write about. Plus I've found that posting a pingback to The Daily Post via the link at the top of one of these posts brings in some new people who perhaps wouldn't have found me normally. Sometimes those people stick around; at other times, they may linger for just one or two posts before disappearing into the darkness of the Internet once again. Either way, it's nice to come across new people now and again, and know that I've touched their lives, even in a minor sort of way.

So, then, I don't think I have any particular grand plans for something I want to achieve using this blog. By this point, it's something I just keep around because I've been doing it for so long — and, well, I kind of enjoy coming up with something to write about each day, too. It's part of my routine now; so much so that whenever I'm away from home I always make sure I have some means of posting while I'm away. After 2,091, it's a hard habit to break — and I don't particularly want to, either.

So whether you're a longtime reader or someone who's just dropped by after seeing a pingback on The Daily Post, thank you, once again, for listening to my nonsense, and I hope you got something out of it, even it was just the hint of a smile for whatever reason.

1461: Day After Day

Jan 18 -- 1461 Every so often when I sit down to write this blog thing every day, I look at the number before the post title and think "bloody hell, that's a lot of posts." Then I think "bloody hell, that's quite a long time I've been doing this."

Of course, given that my day job involves writing lots of things every day, it's perhaps arguable whether or not having written a single post on here every day for the last 1,461 days is as impressive as it once was, but I like to think it still shows a certain degree of dedication and commitment on my part. And, given that I'm not the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking particularly good things about themselves, that's one thing with concrete evidence that I can specifically point to and say "yes, that's good; that's something I can be pleased with."

I feel doubly pleased when I think back to how this all started. For those who have joined me recently, the basic gist was this: a few UK-based writers got together and decided to write something every day, initially for a year. I joined quite late in January in that first year, and haven't stopped since. Interestingly, a significant number of the people who started that first year also gave up very quickly — the person I regard as the "founder" simply bowed out with a tweet that said "fuck #oneaday" one day and never picked it up again — but others stuck it out for most or even all of that first year.

Following that, I managed to organise a ragtag group of bloggers into a group who helped motivate each other somewhat, and in the process we raised a bit of money for charity. Again, though, relatively few people made it through the whole year, but I stood firm. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only one of the original participants from either of those first couple of years to still be blogging on a daily basis and while I may not always have a lot of meaningful things to say, I still sit down and write every day, regardless.

Because it wasn't necessarily about writing something meaningful or useful. It was just about writing. As with any creative endeavour, regardless of how ambitious it is, the only way to get better and refine your craft is to continue doing it as often as possible. You might just discover a few things about yourself in the process.

For my part, I've discovered — well, confirmed, really — that writing is a good outlet for me. If stress and anxiety is starting to build up in my head, as it often does, writing this post each day is a good means of venting some of that steam. I don't even necessarily have to write specifically about what I'm stressed or anxious about; if you look back to the period on this blog where my marriage was falling apart and I was in a seriously bad place mental health-wise, you'll notice that a lot of the posts are considerably more creative than they perhaps are now. I don't think this is coincidental at all; misery appears to beget creativity, which may account for the whole "tortured artist" stereotype.

Note: I do not advocate the seeking out of misery purely to get your own creative juices flowing, but if, for whatever reason, you're not in a good place, use that negative energy to make something. It doesn't have to be good. But it can help.

Anyway. I think that's enough blabbering on for now. Just another day in the increasingly long list.

#oneaday Day 630: Over My Shoulder

I've been blogging since July of 2008. Actually, that's not quite true — I've been blogging a lot longer than that, but had a couple of other websites prior to this one. To my knowledge, only one of them is still there, and that was a somewhat abortive effort. This site, then, represents one of the most consistent creative endeavours that I've ever undertaken.

For what, though? What is it achieving? I'm certainly not making any great effort to ponce around with anything like search engine optimisation and the limit of my attempts to "drive traffic" consist of auto-posting each entry to Facebook and Twitter as a link for people to click through to. And yet, here I am, day after day, writing something for anywhere between — most weeks — 20 and 100 people. 24 of you readers are subscribed by email, meaning you get a daily dose of nonsense posted direct to your inbox (and possibly don't count against my views count, you bastards, unless you actually do, in which case you're not bastards, and I don't really care anyway) and I have no idea how many more might be subscribed via RSS.

As I've said on a few other occasions, though, the main reason I'm writing all this gobbledegook day after day is for myself. I'm not sure if I'll be looking back on this content in a few years time and figuring out something profound about myself or not, but I certainly like having it all there — and knowing that there are 629 daily posts before this one (and a few more irregular ones prior to that) is quite satisfying.

I like reading back old things that I've written. I don't keep all old pieces of writing that I do, but I have some knocking around that date back to my school days, which are a good few years ago now. It's sometimes interesting to look back and read your work and consider what might have been going through your mind at the time — or what inspired you to write a particular work.

I think the oldest piece of writing I've still hung onto is the Woolworths notebook that my friend Edd and I took on holiday to Gran Canaria. It was 1992, and we were in Year 7. That holiday was memorable for all sorts of reasons — the cockroach attack in the middle of the night, the discovery of Mortal Kombat and X-Men in the local arcade, our first experiences snorkelling. And most of it is entertainingly chronicled in the dodgy handwriting of the 11-12 year old me.

The way you write changes over the years, even if you're not a writer and if you don't do it often. Old people using computers forget how to use capital letters and punctuation (except the exclamation mark, which they use with gay abandon) while some develop a clear sense of style and voice according to who they're writing to. When you're twelve, however, most of your writing is written in the same register, however many English lessons on formal and informal letters you might have had. My old notebook is a fine example of this, sharing details of stupid in-jokes that Edd and I had at the time, the context of which has been mostly lost to the mists of time save for the written record of the fact that we did indeed compose a short song called "I'm an egg-timer" together and that we found it inexplicably amusing to hum the theme tune from the Whiskas cat food advert while descending a water slide.

Don't ask. I have no idea.

I wonder if in twenty years' time — firstly, will this site still be around or will we all have switched to something like the OASIS platform in Ready Player One? — I'll still be writing in the same manner. Perhaps I will — in some senses, even though I'm (painfully) aware that I'm thirty years old, in others I feel like I haven't grown up a whole lot. There's still a ton of things about the world that I don't know or don't understand, and a lot of people seem to have a firmer grasp on them than me — or, more likely, simply do a better job of hiding the fact that they're overwhelmed by everything out there.

Arguably part of this feeling of "immaturity", for want of a better word, is writing this every day. When I'm writing some nonsense here, I can just sort of "let go" and channel that twelve year old kid who felt the need to chronicle everything on a holiday with a friend. I'm under no obligations to write in a particular style or follow the AP Style Guide or whatever (though you'll notice I do make an effort to spell and punctuate correctly, typos aside) so I can just sit back (well, forward, otherwise I can't reach the keyboard) and type whatever is in my head onto the virtual page in front of me.

This is a nice feeling, and that's why I do this day after day. I appreciate those of you who keep coming back to read my ramblings, I really do. But the act of writing, of self-expressions, of, in some cases, being able to write things that are difficult to talk about out loud — that's why I do it. It makes me feel good, makes me feel like I have an outlet and am free to express myself however I see fit. And sure, anyone reading can and will judge me based on the things I write. And that's fine, because after all, I'm posting all this for public consumption. But more than that, this is something for me. This is me. And if you've come along for the ride here and read the last six hundred and whatever posts, you probably know me pretty damn well by now.

If, however, you're new, the archives are on the right hand side. I'll see you in a few months.