Ten years ago today I began to realize a goal with the help of the then new blogger tool from Pyra, the starting of a periodic blog of pick hits - items I found, discovered, considered or otherwise wished to share generically. Since that time I have changed toolsets 2 times (lazy by some standards!), changed hosting providers twice (once through acquisition), changed employment 5 times (impacting how much I could say about said work at different times). And as a plot would show, decreased in frequency of handcrafted posting.
And yet, blogging still feels like something I do. Not in a self identifying way like some mommy-bloggers I have encountered, nor in an a-list way. More like "I blog. it is part of the sharing which I do" way, fatuous as that may sound.
A few months ago Ryan Rasmussen asked me what it meant to me to have been blogging for nearly 10 years. At the time I hadn't't reflected upon it. I have since to some degree, but Ryan will be disappointed that my answer is not much fuller than it was at the time. It's about the power to share I live, I share bits of what I learn. That was the goal of my early meta-zine Marginal Press Project, it was my interest when I was a library employee, and was the reason I wanted to have a web presence and then weblog. Of course, over the past ten years the toolsets available have expanded and advanced. Some commercial, many open, many interesting ones bravely bridging the two continua. Like many, I have used these with some interest - microblogging, bookmarking socially, linking and sharing while reading, But in some ways I find myself these ten years on wanting to regain more responsibility for the history and retention of that content. Not in a way of hiding, but by way of balancing my desire to share with others and my need to share with myself - to extermalize my memory.
So here, ten years on, that's the venture I set for myself for the next period - to improve where I can on what I've learned, to revive my efforts and tools with which to share. Good times.