13 Years

Posted on June 22, 2015 in Activity Site News

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Thirteen years ago, today, I launched this dangerous experiment. It ended a long silence. I had a place to write once more.

My wife gave me the idea. Keeping a diary that others could read and comment upon appealed to me. The abUSENET — the only other place where one could publish long articles without having to go through an editor — tended to punish those who spoke about themselves, their opinions, and their struggles. A blog let you do all these things and you could quietly control comments so that you could keep things civilized even though this discouraged many people from leaving them.

Many subjects have passed these pages: the war in Iraq, elections, daily life, my travels, the weather, my dreams, and my struggles with depression and, after my diagnosis, bipolar disorder. I lost more than half of my regular visitors because of my pacifist views during the War and most of the rest when I started writing about bipolar disorder. My effort to bring them back or find new ones has been difficult and disappointing. Every day I ask if I stopped writing, would people notice? I soldier on, sometimes in despair, sometimes in the confidence that what I have to say will mean something to someone.

13 years is a long time. I am still here.