Ten Years
One decade ago today, I sat down and started writing blog posts here.
This is the room I wrote in:
That room no longer exists, and not just because it doesn't have all my books and papers everywhere. The house was renovated (for the first time in decades) after I left, with the area that had been my apartment pretty well gutted.
The computer I began the blog with was an iMac G3. A year later, I got the laptop that's visible in those photos.
I've been working up to this anniversary moment by writing posts about each of the years in the decade. Here they are for easy reference, along with the primary topics of the posts:
- 2012 [beginning to look back]
- 2011 [some thoughts on canonical nationalism]
- 2010 [the turn to film writing]
- 2009 [month by month]
- 2008 [thoughts on teaching & syllabi]
- 2007 [the bad year]
- 2006 [a Mumpsimus taxonomy]
- 2005 [some old posts worth saving]
- 2004 [Annus Mirabilis, or, Why I Owe A Lot to Neil Gaiman]
- 2003 [the beginning]
What I haven't yet said is what most needs to be said: Thank you to you, for reading. I would have continued with the blog for a while even if nobody read it, but I wouldn't have gone on for 10 years. Audiences are necessary as soundingboards and goads and inspiration. I don't have words for how grateful I am to the folks who've stopped by, read some of my rantings and ramblings, and sometimes even returned. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'm not myself old enough yet to sing Stephen Sondheim's great song "I'm Still Here", but 10 years of internet time has got to be close to being old enough, and I've always thought Elaine Stritch's voice would be perfect for the audio book of the blog, so let's let her sing for us in celebration...
Tomorrow, I start in the Ph.D. in Literature program at the University of New Hampshire. It's a new path, a new experience. I have no plans to end this blog. It's come this far, so why not keep going?