Chris's Wiki :: blog/TenYears

Wandering Thoughts is now ten years old

July 3, 2015

Because I am often terrible at scheduling, Wandering Thoughts' ten year anniversary was actually almost a month ago, on June 12th (for odd reasons). And as I noted four years ago, I'm not really for anniversaries. Still, ten years is something that feels significant, enough so to produce some words.

I'm a different person than I was ten years ago and four years ago, but then we almost all are. Some of the changes are welcome ones, some less welcome, and some just are. Wandering Thoughts too has undoubtedly changed over the ten years I've been writing at least one entry a day here, but those changes are usually less obvious to me. Hopefully they are overall for the better.

(When I go back to read old entries, especially very old entries, I feel somewhat ambivalent about the changes in my writing style that I think I see. I suspect that everyone does.)

If you'd told me at the start that I would still be writing Wandering Thoughts ten years later, well, honestly I might have believed you; I'm the sort of person who gets into habits and then sticks to them unless something big comes along to jar me out. Am I happy to have done this and to still be doing this? Yes, of course, or I wouldn't be doing it any more. Writing Wandering Thoughts has enriched my life in any number of ways, both in the writing itself and in the contacts and associations I've made through the blog, and I'd be a quite different person without WT.

(Sometimes I wonder a bit about what that other me would be like. It's kind of fun but also hard; WT's effects on me feel quite pervasive.)

I don't expect to stop writing here and I probably won't change how I do it; my one entry a day habit is quite well set by now (although I sometimes think about the potential merits of taking longer to develop and write entries; writing them in an hour or two has its limitations and drawbacks).

(The next vaguely significant waypoint will be 4,000 main entries. Don't expect a marker for it, though.)

(And yes, if I think about it, ten years of an entry a day is kind of a scary thing to contemplate. I don't even try to add up the total time and effort I've put into Wandering Thoughts in the past ten years; it's far too intimidating.)

Comments on this page:

By cian at 2015-07-03 15:59:16:

Congratulations, and thank you. Wondering Thoughts is s blog I've been reading since I was a student running my college netsoc. I've been in ops nearly six years professionally now - and I still feel that I'm learning from your posts. It's been an incredibly valuable source of wisdom and opinion through out my career.

By Claire at 2015-07-04 17:36:08:

I'm also very grateful for your work on WT. I check it every day, and even if a post isn't immediately useful for my environment, it's usually interesting or entertaining, and often has insights that turn out to be useful sometime in the future.

Sometimes just reading you on some minor frustration resonates with me, and helps me feel that I'm in good company—that validation is incredibly helpful, especially coming from someone in a similar (work) position.

Thank you, and please continue writing!
  — Claire

By Aristotle Pagaltzis at 2015-07-04 22:06:21:

You linked to me a long time ago, my backlink searches picked that up, and I’ve been reading ever since. It has become my aggregator popcorn: persistently in the same sweet spot for both density and length, not always terribly consequential but never disappointing, so always among the first things I’ll read when checking my feeds reveals a new entry here. It’s been consistently interesting, sometimes useful, occasionally enlightening. I envy you the ability to keep this up like you do.

By Aristotle Pagaltzis at 2015-07-05 00:26:36:

Something has been bugging me about what I wrote. The thing I could not pin down clearly enough to express myself properly is that the trivial is not a weakness but essential to making the whole work. As in any good diary. The trick to a good diary is to find the interesting in the trivial, and that is something you have managed to achieve consistently. Hat tip.

By Andreas Jaggi at 2015-07-05 10:59:09:

Congratulations!
Your articles are very pleasant to read and provide inspiring ideas to try out. Hope you will keep writing for at least another ten years :-)

From 84.167.235.201 at 2015-07-06 16:15:18:

Im a daily reader, thanks for your work!

Written on 03 July 2015.

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