Those were the days, my friend
Earlier today I was looking for a file - a copy of a novel I wrote about eight years ago, if you're interested - when I stumbled upon a collection of my old blog posts from late 2006. Back in the day, when blogging was cool and trendy, I used to compile a year's worth of my rubbish and wittering, and dump it all into a word document. Then I'd post an end of year summary, telling you all how much time I'd wasted, how many words of drivel I'd produced and so on and so forth.
Times change. Blogging is still important, but the advent of twitter and facebook have changed their focus somewhat. My outpourings on this page are much fewer and farther between - the last dribbling nonsense was at the end of last month. I'd argue that I'm less erudite than I was back then, too. More wary of stating any great opinion, certainly less cutting and acerbic.
Annoyingly, the first couple of years of blog posts, lovingly archived along with all the images I'd posted, disappeared when the hard drive on my laptop gave up the ghost many years back. It's mostly all still here, of course, but blogger's not well suited for dumping a well-sorted archive to my hard drive. Or at least it wasn't the last time I looked. It's fascinating though to look back at this self-selective record of my life since December 2004 (yes, really it's been that long).
I never kept a diary as a child. Still don't as an adult. It's not something my parents ever encouraged me to do, and having an older brother whose sole purpose in life was to make me miserable (or so it seemed to me), meant that I learnt early on not to give any hostages to fortune. A diary, no matter how well hidden or coded, would have been found, read, used to wind me up or simply destroyed just because it was mine.* Having not written one, I can lament and imagine that it would have been full of the most wonderful memories, insightful comments and embarrassing little vignettes that I nonetheless could take a secret pride in having written. In truth, it would have been mostly rubbish like 'got up this morning, had breakfast, went out to play.' Ad infinitum.
This blog, then, is the next best thing, and it's fun, if rather time-consuming, to look back. Nostalgia, after all, isn't what it used to be.
So for SirBenfro's seventh birthday, here is a brief overview of the year's blogging. It's not quite as impressive as 2006's stats.
Over the year, the blog has managed a heady 5,927 page hits. Time was I used to get that in a month. I guess it's true what they say - the way to build a blog audience is to write something every day.
I've managed to post at least once a month, which is something. Although in August my sole post was a single line bemoaning my lack of input. In total, I've written just shy of 23,000 words, and a total of 30 posts. Photographs play a heavy part in padding out the dross.
For a year in which I've upped sticks and moved country, taken over the family farm and begun the long task of re-stocking and building up numbers, it's a bit pathetic really. Must try harder in future.
* we've long since made our peace, my older brother and I, but as children ours was a very stormy relationship.
Times change. Blogging is still important, but the advent of twitter and facebook have changed their focus somewhat. My outpourings on this page are much fewer and farther between - the last dribbling nonsense was at the end of last month. I'd argue that I'm less erudite than I was back then, too. More wary of stating any great opinion, certainly less cutting and acerbic.
Annoyingly, the first couple of years of blog posts, lovingly archived along with all the images I'd posted, disappeared when the hard drive on my laptop gave up the ghost many years back. It's mostly all still here, of course, but blogger's not well suited for dumping a well-sorted archive to my hard drive. Or at least it wasn't the last time I looked. It's fascinating though to look back at this self-selective record of my life since December 2004 (yes, really it's been that long).
I never kept a diary as a child. Still don't as an adult. It's not something my parents ever encouraged me to do, and having an older brother whose sole purpose in life was to make me miserable (or so it seemed to me), meant that I learnt early on not to give any hostages to fortune. A diary, no matter how well hidden or coded, would have been found, read, used to wind me up or simply destroyed just because it was mine.* Having not written one, I can lament and imagine that it would have been full of the most wonderful memories, insightful comments and embarrassing little vignettes that I nonetheless could take a secret pride in having written. In truth, it would have been mostly rubbish like 'got up this morning, had breakfast, went out to play.' Ad infinitum.
This blog, then, is the next best thing, and it's fun, if rather time-consuming, to look back. Nostalgia, after all, isn't what it used to be.
So for SirBenfro's seventh birthday, here is a brief overview of the year's blogging. It's not quite as impressive as 2006's stats.
Over the year, the blog has managed a heady 5,927 page hits. Time was I used to get that in a month. I guess it's true what they say - the way to build a blog audience is to write something every day.
I've managed to post at least once a month, which is something. Although in August my sole post was a single line bemoaning my lack of input. In total, I've written just shy of 23,000 words, and a total of 30 posts. Photographs play a heavy part in padding out the dross.
For a year in which I've upped sticks and moved country, taken over the family farm and begun the long task of re-stocking and building up numbers, it's a bit pathetic really. Must try harder in future.
* we've long since made our peace, my older brother and I, but as children ours was a very stormy relationship.
Comments