What made you decide to start a blog? If you’ve blogged about this before, go back and read it. Is that still the reason? What’s changed?
I launched my first real blog in December 2002 with the intention of keeping a travel log for my work sabbatical in early 2003. I was going to be traveling around Europe, visiting seven different countries over the span of nearly four weeks, thousands of miles from home, disconnected from friends and family. The blog was my way of keeping a diary for myself of my travels and experiences, as well as keeping everyone back home up to date with where I was.
Yeah, I get around.
Remember, this is before Facebook, before Twitter. I wasn’t going to have an international cell phone with me, and even if I did, there was no way I was going to call EVERYONE; that’d be way too expensive, and the time zone differences would cause too many missed calls.
I started writing some posts leading up to the trip, just to get the hang of the software I was using (Greymatter). Once I headed to Europe, I would visit Internet cafes and try to quickly type up recaps of the day. I would be paying by the minute, sometimes expensive rates, and always on international keyboard layouts. Let me tell you, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to type quickly on a keyboard layout that’s wildly different than what you’re used to — I’m looking at you, France!
Two weeks into the trip, while I was in Germany, my house had a power failure, which turned off my home computer where I was running the blog software. For the rest of the trip, no one would be able to keep tabs on my travels, but I would continue to type up my blog posts into email, sending them to my family and a few friends directly. Those emails were then pasted back into the blog when I returned home from Europe.
The blog has continued over the years, under different hostnames, running different software packages, hosted on my home computer or through a hosting service. There have been times when the blog was all but dead, going months without a post. There have been time when my activity was consistent and prolific. My topics have ranged far and wide. Sometimes when I go back and read over the old posts, I’m proud of my writing; other times, I question my literacy.
Between the old blog and the current blog, we’re looking at well over 500 posts and going strong!
Jason Nassi 