I’m gonna go on about this all day and probably longer, but today—as I write these words and post them on April 20, 2026—is my blogiversary.
On April 20, 2021, I was sitting in a hot little studio apartment in mainland Vancouver having just moved out there for work and I decided to write an email back to some of the folks back in Alberta—family and school friends, you know how it goes—and at some point (as I am wont to do,) I went down the metaphorical rabbit hole and well… I started a blog instead.
There was no software to do that, of course, at least not that I had figured out yet, and so I hand-coded the whole damn thing, and wrote raw HTML for a few months worth of posts that followed.
That started twenty-five years ago today.
Today, where now I sit with a half dozen WordPress installations, a personal plugin repo, and a career built on making websites, that all looks quaint. Crazy. But it kickstarted a lifestyle. There’s no other good word for it.
Oh sure. Those old, old, old posts and the first sixteen years of my blog are all archived offline. Alas, most of it was pretty stupid (not that what I post here is all that much better, even if it is often more tastefully considered) but I did write and write and write millions of words over that span and share them with an audience that was as enthusiastic for fresh blog … in kinda the same way that most of the world is currently grooving on doomscrolling their social feeds in 2026. Blogging was a thing back then. It was the way. It was the beating heart of the internet.
Yeah, now blogs are a bit old school, but back when I started this unpaid gig I was twenty-four going on twenty-five, and and that was twenty-five years ago which (math nerds, go!) makes me forty-nine going on fifty today. Shifting over to a tiktok account or trying groove with you all on the socials was never going to be my speed. So, a few years back I doubled-down on the blog and now I write and write and write more words here and there and other places to keep up the digital patter of a well-blogged life.
Why?
I have figured out exactly two reasons why this has stuck with me.
One, I like to write and so writing something immediate and personal has always been a great way to hone those skills. It’s a warm up for more serious writing. It’s a habit. It’s a personal public diary of sorts. It’s practice. It feels like I have accomplished something.
Two, it makes me actually do stuff. People tell me I am weirdly active and exploratory of a countless list of activities, hobbies, and projects. They are not wrong. But it’s not some attention disorder or curiosity overload, so much as the doing of those things and the writing about those things have been so deeply entangled it is almost a kind of chicken and egg problem at this point. Rather, I would actually argue that a lot of my curiosity manifests from a drive to have interesting things to write about. I’m not so much writing about the things I’m doing …as I am writing and looking for things to write about. I’m busy doing stuff mostly because I maintain this public accountability log that drives me to dabble and play and make and to become and stay interesting enough to write about.
But whatever the reason, it’s been twenty five years. A lot has changed. A lot has not. And figuring out the whys and wherefores will be something I do until I post my last post. (This is not that post.) Stay tuned. The next twenty-five is sure to be really interesting… or something.
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