17th Blogoversary, an Award, and the Difficulty of Analogue Communication

 

Image created with help from Bing AI

An old friend from the Analogue World called me today, chatting away in some detail about her Christmas and New Year. For my own part, I found myself with very little to contribute to the conversation - mainly because I felt that very little of what I had been up to myself was likely to make any sense to her.

I suppose she may have "kind of" grasped the concept of me having had a video call with my brother on Christmas Eve. But I simply couldn't think of any way to even try to explain to her, for example, that while on New Year's Eve I went to bed at 9 pm, at the same time I was also attending the Laughing Horse Awards Ceremony on a small island among the U.S. Virgin Islands, hosted by blogger Yorkshire Pudding. (If you weren't there yourself, you can read more about it in his first two posts for 2026 on his blog by the same name.) 

Actually I have to confess that even my own memories of that event are rather blurry, in spite of the fact that I was even honoured with an award myself. (But I suppose that's probably true for some Nobel Prize winners as well!)

The official report from the event also claims that I performed some ABBA songs. I can't say I recall that either, but one that seems likely to myself would be this one:

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Now I'm curious to know if other bloggers recognise the difficulty (or sheer impossibility) of explaining, to people who don't even use the internet at all, your own daily interaction with people around the world whom you never met in the so-called real life...

 

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My own first blog (originally called The Island of the Voices) was started on 5th January, 2009. And I'm finding it pretty amazing, that 17 years later, I'm still in blog-contact with some other bloggers that I got to know during the very first year - while also still continuing to meet new interesting people along the way!

 

My first blog post ever, 5 January 2009

 Happy New Blogging Year to us all!

  

 

White Magic, and 15th Blogoversary

While yesterday the trees were black silhouettes against the snow and sky, today I woke up to find everything covered in a fresh layer of white. (It had snowed a bit more over night, and perhaps some frost effect added to that.) At midday I went out for a walk around the old cemetery, where there are lots of big old trees.

 

 

I temporarily forgot back on Friday (5th January) - but that day was my 15th Blogoversary! 15 years since the start of my first blog, The Island of the Voices. (Predecessor of this one - because of some technical issues, I found it better to start over two years later.) 

I think I've probably been repeating my very first blog post every January since then, but here it is again:

I'm pretty sure that whatever I had in mind back then, I did not see myself keeping it up for as long as fifteen years into the future (and hopefully even beyond). But here I am, still!

14th Blogoversary

 

Hard to grasp, but today I'm celebrating my 14th "blogoversary". It was on 5th January 2009 that I created my very first blog post.

Some of you may have heard the story several times by now, but here it is again:

A long-time penfriend of mine in Australia had started a blog, and told me about it in a letter for Christmas 2008. To be able to comment on hers, I needed a Blogger account of my own. So I sat down at my computer to create a profile; and once I had managed that, I thought: Why not explore the whole blogging thing a bit more...

My first blog was entitled "The Island of the Voices". Two years later, when starting over because of some technical issues and layout changes, I changed the title to "Beyond the Lone Islands" (still inspired by the same book):

Screenshot of my very first blog post:

Had someone asked me back then if I thought I'd still be blogging in 2023, my answer would probably have been that I doubted that very much! And if not for all the other blogging friends I made around the world along the way, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be. (Actually, some of you I will also soon have known for nearly 14 years!)

As the saying goes: "Time sure does fly when you're having fun" ...

 

12th Blogoversary

 

Yesterday it somehow slipped my mind, but today I remembered: Yesterday was my 12th anniversary as a blogger. My first blog was entitled The Island of the Voices, and to a handful of faithful old followers, the screenshot below (of my very first blog post) may seem vaguely familiar by now - not because anyone actually started following already from day one, but because I've probably celebrated every year since by repeating that post...

In connection with moving the blog to its present address two years later, I changed the name to Beyond the Lone Islands - still referring to the same book. ('The Island of the Voices' was one of the 'Lone Islands'.) I ran into some problems with image storage, plus there was some major layout change at Blogger, and I didn't want to risk losing or messing up the previous posts.

One thing that is pretty amazing to me is that some of the friends I made during the very first one or two years in the Blogworld are still following (and I them). And looking back at this last year of global pandemic, social distancing and lock-downs etc, blogging and other international contacts have continued to be a true blessing, serving to keep up a bit of normality in the general chaos. So thanks, everyone! 

PS. I just had a peek at a list of names of wedding anniversaries. It says 11 years is Steel, and 12 years is Silk. So if 2020 was a hard year, let's hope 2021 will be smoother!