20 Years of Blogging Milestone - On The Web - February 2024

Today marks two decades of blogging on JakeParrillo.com.  Twenty years.   Plenty has changed since I fell in love with the Web via political blogging.  I've met some good friends, have earned jobs, *almost* compelled Da Coach Mike Ditka to run for US Senate and was allowed to flex my writing muscles via my own online diary.  My goals have changed over the years, too.  From being a member of the "Blogosphere" and linking to other bloggers/getting links from other writers to distributing the content via both feed and email newsletter to attempting to monetize things via AdSense and FeedBurner (hey!!!) ads to what I've shifted to over the past 10-or-so-years: writing mostly for an audience of one:  myself.   Somewhere over the years, I dropped having ads and when FeedBurner email newsletters were sunset, I, too, sunset having my daily blog posts distributed beyond this little place on the Web. 

My very first post - basically my own "Hello, World" was posted on February 16, 2004.  I was 25 years old at the time and all-in on my early career.  The Web (and blogging) was my ticket to mattering.  It gave me an outlet and a voice and I'd like to think that we (including David and Tom P), were helpful in defining a leader and a party that is very different than the one that exists today.   We also had SO.MUCH.FUN.  

Today, I'm more than 4600 posts deep into writing. And I've written/posted every single day since 2015 (I took some time in 2013 and 2014 to write under a pen name about Illinois politics).  SUSDAT. 

In the realm of personal blogging, many of the long-time/still-going folks who have kept up with it are five-or-so years ahead of me.  Jason Kottke marked 25 years last Spring.  I saw this post from David Wertheimer that talked about Ideapad hitting 25 years last Fall.  Anil Dash posted about hitting the 20-year milestone in 2019.    But, it was a more recent post from Anil Dash that caught my attention recently: This post about podcasting focused on this line: "...wherever you find podcasts".  For me, that's a big part of the appeal of blogging here at my own domain on (currently and for the past 15-or-so-years) Google's Blogger's cms that allows for portability. 

I suppose a couple of those ideas go together:  my audience shift of writing for others to (over the years) mostly writing for myself.  And, that notion of being on the Web, not on a platform.   At one time, I was a regular 'Tweeter'.  Back in late Aughts, I posted the same nonsense as everyone else on Twitter.  At some point, I stopped.  And, I've gone back and deleted all of those old Tweets.  Same on Instagram.  I shared a few photos in the middle 2010's.  But then I stopped.  I never felt comfortable.  

But here, on my own blog, I've written about things that were interesting to me and that's evolved over the years.  From live music and politics in my early days.  To technology, the Web and startups in my middle years to mostly a garden diary these days (with a little pizza-making sprinkled in).  And, unlike on the social platforms, I've found myself COMFORTABLE doing it.  

The utility on posting in my own [garden diary] is significant for me as I learn from my own mistakes and what is working and what isn't working in the garden.  But, the act of writing and posting allows me to learn about things and gives me an opportunity to flex my writing muscles in an attempt to avoid atrophy.  

Paul Graham's post about writing feels right to me.  In it, he says: Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them.  

He posits that the act of writing about something, anything, shows the writer that they don't really know things as well as they thought they did.  The journey of writing and trying to explain something to someone/anyone teaches ME a lot about gardening and allows me to organize my thoughts.   I use some of my garden listicles as a FORCING mechanism to get me to NOT describe a plan - but rather...COME UP WITH the plan.  

I've been doing just that for twenty years.  And, I see no reason to stop now.  The garden is my focus for now.  But, who knows where my interests will lie in the years to come.  My writing reveals what has my attention, but it also reveals a little bit about me.  I'm getting to middle age and with that, comes the idea that we aren't all going to be around forever.  There's a little bit of me that smiles thinking that my kids - who CERTAINLY aren't reading my blog today - might find a connection with their father later in life.  When they're older and I'm older, too.  

Twenty years is a long time.  I've worked at my current employer for (almost) eleven years and that's the second longest thing I've done.  Blogging is almost 2x that run.  

Here's a look back at some of the years that I've celebrated the blogging milestone.

2024 - 20 years of blogging.  Two decades.
2023 - 19 years of blogging.
2022 - No Anniversary post, but 4K posts published
2021 - 17 year Blogging Anniversary
2020 - 16 year Blogging Anniversary
2019 - 15 year Blogging Anniversary
2016 - 12 year Blogging Anniversary
2014 - 10 year Blogging Anniversary
2013 - 9 year Blogging Anniversary
2011 - 7 year Blogging Anniversary