Ten Years Later

"Man Writing" by Oliver Ray

Happy blogiversary! Ten years ago, I made my first blog post. Today, I recount the journey.

It started with books. We lived in England at the time; with young children and poor weather, I suspected lots of time indoors. (I was right.) I thus committed myself to rekindle an old flame- a love of reading. But I have a bad memory, so I wanted a way to remember what I read. I hit on blogging- doing book reviews as a way to improve what I retained and look back on the works I had enjoyed. Little did I know what it would become.

I soon expanded the blog to travel recaps and movie reviews. I also added overviews of my favorite subjects to share interests, document reading lists, and serve as a reference (for myself and others). I dabbled in poetry and humor. I talked about our years in Europe and the struggles we had re-adjusting to America. I had a game post or two (those posts began in earnest in 2017). I reflected on life and personal struggles like materialism. At the end of the year, I looked back. At the beginning of the next, I looked ahead. The blog became a way to document hobbies, experiences, and goals.

Though most technical elements were there near the beginning, I refined things as time went on. I started adding graphics to each post, then went back and retroactively did so for my earliest entries (one big advantage of the medium). I started adding tags. I changed the URL in 2016 (it was initially "overlord musings," an inside joke). I added pages (accessible across the top of the main site) to focus and organize my main interests. I learned how to embed videos, hyperlinks in pictures, and more. I even started a second blog in 2020 focusing on Magic:the Gathering.

Ten years later, here we are. I looked at why I write back in 2014, and those reasons are still the driving force. Blogging for me is a chance to share, organize my thoughts, document progress, and practice writing. Here are the stats so far:

Posts: 1,397 (counting this one)

Views: Over 88,000 total- 57,893 (for this URL) plus ~30,800 (for the original URL)

Most common labels* (with number of posts so labeled):

• books (689) 
• movies (205) 
• games (178) 
• religion (155) 
• reflections (153) 
• Europe (131) 
• superhero (122) 
• Star Wars (119)
• history (116)
• travels (114)
• graphic novel (100) 

It's been a great ten years. Here's to many more.

*note: many posts have more than one label