Late last night, I realized that it was the tenth anniversary (birthday?) of Consolation Champs. Although I’d started reading blogs in late 1999, and had actually been manually updating a page I called now.html for a few months before, it was on July 7, 2000 that I started my first real blog, thanks to the good folks at Blogger.com.
Back then, there were probably a few hundred blogs in existence, and I could link to all the ones I followed on one page. It was before the days of punditry, so there were no business blogs or political blogs. They grew out of people’s personal “home pages” and so were a form of self-expression. After reading about the first blogger meet-up at South by Southwest 2000, I became determined to meet some of my heroes and heroines, and the next spring, I did. I’ve returned each March to Austin and SXSW because some of the friendships I’ve made online and cemented there are very valuable to me. And I’ve stubbornly kept this blog going as a mostly personal blog, although I don’t post nearly as regularly as I used to. That’s partially due to laziness, but also because we have so many other online tools for keeping people updated about our lives (Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc.).
But I’m proud of Consolation Champs for other reasons, too. By working with several different blogging platforms (first Blogger, then Movable Type, now WordPress), I’ve increased my knowledge of how the web works. In the early days, I did much more of the coding and design of my pages, but even now, blogging helps to keep me sharp on the latest web technologies. And all that writing (1,335 posts over ten years!) has sharpened my skills immeasurably. In fact, without rambling on here for so long, I would never have started my other blog, Toronto Screen Shots. Blogging has led to friendships and to work, and has expanded my view of the world over the past decade. I hope it will always be a part of my life.
Now, just for fun, here are some of the things I was talking about way back in the year 2000:
- Is 35 too old to be in the web design business?
- An early meme and one of my favourite spontaneous jokes ever.
- Complaining that Withnail and I wasn’t yet available on DVD
- Perennial whining about the Toronto International Film Festival
- Evidence of real love
And that’s just from July and August of 2000! Feel free to read all 1,335 posts and I’d be delighted if you left a comment, too!