Five Years of One Man & His Blog

I can hardly believe it, but today is the fifth anniversary of this blog.

Back in March 2003, I decided that this blogging thing was going to make a huge difference to the way journalists worked, and I ought to get more serious about it than my Livejournal allowed. As I said, back in that very first post:

I’m a 30-ish writer and journalist. I have an eclectic set of hobbies and interests which may or may not become relevant to these pages. Really, I’m going to use this to vent opinion and thoughts on current events and general philosophies of life, possibly with a somewhat humorous bent, but we’ll see. I already have a Livejournal for the more mundane, day-to-day stuff, you see, and fancied doing something a little different. Let’s see if it works.

And so, One Man & His Blog was born, initially on Blogger, and then on Movable Type, which has remained the software underlying the site ever since. The eclectic set of hobbies and interests mostly have their own blogs, and I’ve given up on much of the current affairs stuff, as I was pretty useless at it.

Through that half decade, the blog has focused on everything from photography, to architecture, to Lewisham life. It’s also been through a huge number of design changes:

Now, I’m settled happily into a blogging/journalism intersection groove, as it’s where my interest lies – and what my job is about. One Man & His Blog is more important than ever to me, because it’s my outboard brain; where I think aloud about the issues that are upmost in my mind at work, articulate them, and share them.

And I think it’s fair to say that this blog has changed my life. I wouldn’t be doing the job I’m doing now, if I hadn’t started it. I would have missed making some great friends through blogging. It has already fundamentally changed this journalist’s working life, and I’m seeing it happen to people I work with all the time. It’s been five years well spent.

The fundamental thought process behind setting up this blog remains good for me: it’s where I can explore what publishing means in the online age. And thus, I hope I’ll still be here, on this blog, doing this stuff in five, 10 and 25 years’ time.

Cheers!