Although it's hard to believe, both for me and for those who know me, there was a time when I was not a blogger. The me of this time was a struggling freelance writer, desperate to find venues who would publish her, even though she had rarely been published before. The me of this time also had a friend who recommended that, as I developed my reading audience, I might want to create a blog to give an online home to the pieces I couldn't sell as a freelancer. I initially thought she was crazy - why would I give away content when I was trying to make a living by selling it?
But as I explored this emerging world of blogging, I began to see the value, and stepped in tentatively, reading lots, posting occasionally, then less tentatively, reading, participating in conversations and posting regularly. The tools developed, from early Blogger that still required us to tweak the HTML by including tags like <b> to indicate a boldface type, to WYSIWYG interfaces that enabled us to easily embed video and photo content. The audience expanded, and conversations proliferated. My participation in this world transformed my career and my life; I'm literally thousands of miles from where I started, all in the space of a decade.
This blog turns 10 years old on Sunday. If any of you are longtime or regular readers and remember a specific post, topic or category that resonated with you, please let me know: myurbankvetch at gmail. I'm preparing a retrospective post, and may pick some of my own favorites, but thought I'd see if any of you remembered a post of particular impact.
As always, I am so grateful for your attention and thank you so much for reading, lurking, commenting and sharing.
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