It’s my blogiversary! A sort of “big” one in the blogging world, a whole 10 years! According to “Gifts by year” sites, the 10th Anniversary gift is tin or aluminum for traditional, and diamond jewelry for modern. Yeah, we’ll stick with diamonds, lol. In honor of my 10th Blogiversary, I made a couple of images but I couldn’t decide which one I liked better. Maybe I’ll put one in my sidebar as a badge. Feel free to copy if you like. Smile

I copied my first post and re-posted it at the bottom of this post. In so many ways, it feels like nothing’s really changed. I actually started blogging on Blogger, but imported all my posts into WordPress not too much later. Back then, WordPress only had a handful of themes, lol. I started with a different blog name, an offshoot of the name my husband was using at the time. He was Darc and I was Ness, and together … yeah, you get the idea. Open-mouthed smile

Back in 2013 we decided to shake things up a bit. Google Reader was shutting down and for some reason I don’t recall, we decided to shift blog gears a little, too. So, new blog-dentities all around.

What have I learned in a decade of blogging? Well, one thing I’ve learned is that a lot of people come and go, and many bloggers took off running when FaceBook came on the scene. And Twitter. Lots of people like the short, punchy update styles of those sites, and blogging seems to require more. Of course, you can do those short update types of posts here and have it automatically forwarded to those sites if you want. I think blogging offers more alternatives for all the different kinds of writers than places like FaceBook or Twitter. I also think blogging offers more opportunities. FaceBook seems more geared toward a community of people you already know, Twitter … well, 140 characters, enough said! But blogging – you can find new friends, include old friends, and find whole new groups of people to join, from anywhere in the world. Short posts, long posts, picture posts, posts in between, blogging can cover all of those. It’s like a one-stop-shop of connecting. And on WordPress, you can even do private posts for those things you just want to write but not necessarily share.

I’ve learned there’s a new crop of bloggers in town, a crop that needs to share who they are and what they cope with. Bloggers who are looking for community, and who use blogging as their soapbox.

I’ve learned that a lot of people are so over that “make money blogging!” thing, thank goodness! Sometimes people will use a blog to promote a product or service, but no one tries to use their blog itself as a money maker anymore.

I’ve learned there are people out there who follow your blog with no intention of ever connecting with you, they’re only looking for a return follow to sell their product and they un-follow as soon as you follow them back.

I’ve learned that some of the best friends can be made through blogs. *waves at friends* Open-mouthed smile

I’ve learned that it’s usually best to just go with the flow on blogging – just blog what you feel. I spent four years blogging every single day. I reached this silly place where I joked that the world would stop if I didn’t blog. but in a weird way, you can over-do this thing. There really isn’t any pressure, no one’s keeping score, no one’s judging your posting productivity, and nothing bad will happen if you don’t post on a certain schedule. I promise.

I’ve also learned that by and large, stats are meaningless. Oh sure, I did the thing with keeping the stats page open all the time just to see if anyone had visited my blog, in the beginning. It’s fun at first. But eventually you realize that you won’t get any new visitors by watching the stats page, lol. Stats pages really are more for businesses who are trying to target buyers and if that’s not you, then stats won’t really serve a useful purpose, other than to see all the neat places that people are from. That, and to find the isp of the person who left a nasty comment and is trying to troll you. Winking smile

Ultimately, I’ve learned that blogging itself is meaningful. A blog is so much more than just a picture that you might see of someone’s vacation. A blog is someone’s heart on display. It’s all the things they think are funny, the things that hurt them, the things that anger them, the things they struggle with, the things that inspire them, the things that bring them joy, and the things that make them weep. It is their memories, their present situations, and their future-hopes up there for all the world to see. So tread lightly in your comments on someone else’s blog, because hearts are tender, and meaningful, things.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing this journey with me. To 10 more!

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A Meaningful Post …

Posted on September 3, 2006 by DarcsFalcon

“Leave a meaningful post,” my husband said to me, after I started my blog. “Define meaningful,” I wanted to ask, but knew better. If you knew my husband you’d know that asking any kind of open-ended question will either lead to a smart-assed retort or a thoughtful reply that we can generate into hours of verbal fun. And I mean that in a good way. My husband gives really good mind.

My son’s pretending to cut my hair (after a trip to the salon today) and the baby wants to nurse, and I’ve only had about 3 hours of sleep. Sleep is meaningful, especially when you haven’t had any. I should know. I think in the last 5 years I’ve only slept about 6 months worth. Life has certainly been eventful, and that’s meaningful too.

This weekend got me thinking though. It’s an anniversary of sorts. My husband and I met face-to-face for the first time over Labor Day weekend. That meeting changed my life, and there’s not much more meaningful than that. One day I might detail how we met. Our coming together is the sort of thing that I’ve only seen in movies and read about in books – it just doesn’t happen in real life, and certainly not in mine, until I met him. It was magical, ethereal, the stuff that dreams are made of, and more precisely, the stuff that dreams made. It was one of the most spiritual events in my life, on several levels.

Labor Day weekend also makes me think of labor. Not the kind the holiday was intended for, great American labor and ingenuity, but labor as in giving birth, and that’s pretty meaningful too, to bring life into the world. I’ve spent years breastfeeding my children and I consider that to be one of the most meaningful things I’ve done. I may not win mother of the year, but I’ve given my babies the best start I could. And I hope that’s meaningful.

I look around our place and see the boxes as we are preparing to move, I see my baby toddling about and my son in his Spiderman costume, and in a way it all gels. This is what life is about. It’s not the big things, it’s the little things, the day-to-day raising of your family, the little gestures of thoughtfulness, making dinner and doing laundry, spending time just hanging out as a family. This is what meaningful is about. Giving meaning to the moments, making them count, making them peaceful and a comfort; keeping, as best we can, bad things from happening. Yes, there are monsters out there, all kinds of bad things that can and do happen, and I guess I’ve learned that as much as we want to make wonderful things happen, sometimes preventing the bad things from happening can be just as much, if not more, meaningful.

A Meaningful Post … | The “Ness” in DarcNess