Project 52 (41/52): On This Blog Turning 10 (And How Awesome That Totally Is)

.:Project 52 (41/52): On This Blog Turning 10 (And How Awesome That Totally Is):. 

Ten years ago, I opened a blog. I had no idea what a blog was except that it seemed like “an online diary,” and I remember very distinctly that an old friend, Maia Dumdum, was the one who got me into blogging in the first place. It was a strange and exciting time for me: I realized hardly anyone would probably be reading my blog, I knew it wasn’t my ticket to fame and fortune, but what I understood, deep down was that I was keeping a blog because I wanted to live forever. Through my words. My thoughts. Unless someone deleted the entirety of the interwebz, I knew that my blog would outlive me and hopefully paint a decent and kinda detailed picture of myself. I think.

Well, here I am, ten years hence, still alive and kicking. How does it feel?
 
Pretty damned amazing, if you ask me.

I must admit that I'm not surprised to find myself still blogging for ten years from when I started. Over the years, I've written insights and commentary on anything and everything. I've gone through so many noticeable changes in my blogging style, and for the most part, I've had great experiences with people who have read and enjoyed my blog.

If anything, the things I do today in my career were born out of this blog: working in digital, doing a ton of mentalism and even comedy shows that people have heard about through my online accounts, and a host of other things I may not have noticed. This blog has been a very significant part of my life, and I couldn't be happier about the fact that it has been so.

But where does this place me in the pantheon of bloggers? Have I really made a significant contribution to the blogosphere that merits recognition or even celebration?

I don't care, actually.

I've been blogging because I wanted to keep the memories alive, even if Alzheimer's struck me tomorrow and attempted to take them all away. I've been blogging because I felt I had something to say, and whether a single person or a million people read what I had to say, I'd have kept on writing, regardless. It isn't for me to say how important my blog has been, and if you asked me to be honest about it, I'd probably say I haven't really done much with my blog beyond putting my thoughts into words in a way that is uniquely me through and through - and for me, that's enough.

I'm not out here to gain fame and worldwide recognition even if I would certainly not say "no" to that if it came my way. I'm not out here to get rich as a blogger, or to even tell everyone that I was doing blogging even before it became way too mainstream. [/hipster]

I'm out here because I exist. Because in the endless cacophony and the Einerlei we find ourselves immersed in, standing out isn't what's important so much as standing up to be counted. I value every entry I write because they are inextricably a part of who I am and what I am becoming, and it's this very thing that makes blogging great insofar as people believe that blogs without "one great idea" aren't relly all that important: that they stand up to be counted makes them very important, indeed. Because they dare. Because I dare.

So I don't really know where I will go from here, except to keep on writing and writing because it is what I know to do. If I touch any lives as I go about doing it, then great. If all it leaves me to do is to say to the universe "I exist," then that, in and by itself, would have been enough, too.

After everything has been said and done, if a blog post is written in the middle of the internet and nobody ever reads it, unlike a tree that may or may not have made a sound if it fell down in the middle of the forest to be heard by nobody, the 1's and 0's making up this post remain and echo throughout the entire history of the internet.

This blog is not a celebration of the mundane: rather, it is a sublimation of the mundane, because when you think about it, your life is made up of 99% mundaneness, and 1% excitement. Could we ever truly say that only 1% of our life is ever of any worth? Certainly not.

Here's to ten years of MisterVader, and may more and more years come, as I continue to grow and evolve as a blogger, not for some great big idea that I stand behind, but simply because this blog has become every bit as human as I have always been, and I couldn't ask for more from this little, almost whimsical thing that I started last October 14, 2002.