What were you doing back on January 27th, 2004?
Me? I was writing my first blog post. It seems very odd to think about now having started this little process and endeavor a decade ago now. Ever since I started producing content on the web in this format, it's been sort of a whirlwind and a fantastic adventure of what would happen next.
Over the past 10 years my blogging has introduced me to people that I still call friends. It's given me the opportunity to write professionally for awhile and make enough to buy me quite a bit more than a cup of coffee every now and then. I've gotten to travel. Get sneak peaks of new films, albums and TV shows. And of course, gotten to try a few products that I've reviewed and shared my experiences about on my blog.
Blogging also introduced me to WordPress. Something that's been extremely rewarding to me over the years. Since I started my own blog I've setup and managed hundreds of WordPress sites and installations for family, friends and clients. It's a great platform and there's plenty more for me to learn and expand on with WordPress in the next 10 years.
Blogging has also pushed me to write more at times. I remember back to the days when I was writing professionally and at one point was responsible for writing about 2100 words a day spread across 7 different blogs on the Internet. Honestly, pushing it to that level made me start to abhor blogging. It sucked all the fun out of it. I wasn't really writing and sharing much of anything interesting. I was merely vomiting text onto a page like my daughter was vomiting strawberry milk in my first post.
I do miss the days of getting paid to blog though. That monetary motivation caused me to stay with it much more regularly than I have since. I regret that. I want to blog more. I should blog more. I have plenty to talk about and share now, I just don't make the time to do it like I should. I need to read more too. I frequently have told people that the time consuming part to blogging professionally back then wasn't the actual act of writing, it was the constant absorption of other people's content and ideas to think about and share my own opinions of online. I need to get back to that.
Here's to 2014! I don't make resolutions. Here's to attaining my goal of writing more, reading more and getting back into the habit of blogging regularly. It's not really called blogging though now is it? It's content marketing. Or inbound marketing. Still blogging to me. Create content. Create good content. Create content worth reading and worth sharing. That's the key. Practice makes perfect!