I first started blogging using one of my personal domains back in November 2003.
Back then I was using mneylon.com as my main personal domain. Since then I switched over to michele.me and then, more recently, over to michele.blog. For historical reasons my blog used to live under “/blog”, but when I moved over to michele.blog I moved it to the domain root. That means that the .me domain is still “alive”, sort of.
Over the course of over 16 years I’ve bounced from one blogging software platform to another, though I’ve always been “self-hosted”. At the moment I’m using WordPress, which I’m mostly happy with, though I’ve used Movable Type in the past.
I used to write and publish actively with much greater frequency than I do now, though I also write and publish stuff elsewhere as well. Both on the company blog and several other personal ones that I run.
Over the time I’ve been writing on this particular site I’ve published over 400 thousand words of content, which is several multiples of the length my final year thesis from university. Looking back at some of the data I realise that some of the articles I wrote were rather long, though I also know that a lot of my more recent posts are incredibly brief.
It’s January, so it’s that time of the year when people tend to either reflect on the previous year or make predictions and promises for the year ahead. I’ve no intention of doing either really, but I do think I need to write more often. A lot of the writing I’m doing these days is work related. It’s not “fun”. I’ve also found that I’m reading less, which may or may not be related.
So for 2020 I will try to read more and write more too. And the reading I’m referring to will be of the “fun” variety, even if my definition of “fun” can often seem a little dry or quirky! (I’m currently reading a very entertaining book about punctuation – see I did say I was a little quirky!)
On the writing front I’ll try to post more about my travels, including reviews of some of the restaurants I’ve ended up in or events I’ve attended (not the work ones because most of those are far from exciting!). I’m also going to try and take more photos with my “good” camera. I’ve got rather lazy and tend to resort to my mobile phone for most shots.
2020 is a clean canvas in many respects. I know about several of my upcoming trips, but I’ve no idea of what kind of experiences I’ll have along the way.
I want to make sure that I spend more time away from computers and mobile devices. I’ve been making a concerted effort over the past couple of years to not work from home in the evenings unless I have to. I’ve also tried to avoid doing conference calls in the middle of the night. Note I said “tried”. Sometimes it’s unavoidable.
My first trip of 2020 starts in less than 48 hours and while I’m not looking forward to spending “quality time” in a metal tube, I am looking forward to the “down time” I’ll have after the business part of the trip is done. Of course I’ll enjoy the business part of the trip too, but I’m really looking forward to catching a show and having a nice meal or two!
As usual I’ll be posting some photos from my travels to Instagram.
And I’ve finally got my “social” site back up and working again, so you can follow it all here if you’re that way inclined.
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