Change is Good
I had all the intentions in the world of switching the name of this blog in readiness for the new WordPress “.blog” domains becoming available later this year. After sleeping on it, I'm wondering about just leaving it as-is.
There's a simplicity about a couple of letters, and a few numbers. There's a level of anonymity too. I like the idea of being just another number that might be discovered through serendipity, rather than any faux marketing attached to my name. I'm not famous, and I never will be (well unless I do something newsworthy, I guess). I wonder if you can be famous for not being famous ? Famously not famous. That's a pretty good taglineI haven't written a free-wheeling blog post in quite some time. Perhaps this serves as a reboot. Changing things up for the sake of it is good sometimesit provides you with perspective you otherwise might not have had. It forces you to see things differently, and for others to perhaps re-assess who you are, what you think, and what you have to say.
I can't believe I've been writing a blog for over 13 years now. I guess in reality it's far longer than thatI have some ZIP disks at home with backups of the very first webpage I made. It dates from the late 1990s, at a time when I still thought people that curated their own corners of the web were a little bit mad. I remember my ISP offering me webspace back in the day, and responding that I had no clue what I might use it for.
I guess none of us knew back then that we would invest so many thousands of hours into writing our inner thoughts down, and sticking them on the outside of our virtual houses for others to glance at as they wander past. Nobody guessed we would take photos of anything and everythingalthough we might have stared wide eyed at the idea of photography essentially becoming free.
I remember the first time I connected to a bulletin board system in the early 1990s. I remember seeing the conversations appear on the screen, and digging through the archives of usenet via a dial-up connectionreading about UFOs, conspiracy theories, and becoming enthralled with the unfiltered hope and hate that seemed to proliferate the internet anarchy.
I started the last four paragraphs with “I”. This is the fifth. I don't think I've ever done that before (or at least, I can't imagine it). Perhaps this also marks a change in the blograther than writing about the world passing me by so much, maybe it's time to start writing about me. I've kept the internet at arms length for a long time. Sure, there are a few people that receive messages through the likes of KIK, or WhatsApp from time to time, and a few people I try to keep in touch with via email, but beyond that, I'm no more than another face in the crowd to many of you.