Twenty Years of Blogging

Twenty years now
Where'd they go?
Twenty years
I don't know
I sit and I wonder sometimes
Where they've gone   

                 -Bob Seger, "Like a Rock"

When I finally decided to start writing this post, these lyrics came to mind even though I don't care for the song. I know what's happened in the last twenty years- I spent half of that raising my kids, and the other half watching them make their way in the world successfully, each in their own style. I got a house, got married, got stepchildren and grandchildren, expanded the house, became widowed again, and then saw everyone move out, and I started to really confront old age. And the blog remained.  

Starting a blog was supposed to be a hobby, but it turned out to be the second time in my life that a hobby became a career, and so I had to find another hobby. But 20 years later, my professional blogging career has diminished so that I look at Miss Cellania as a fun thing to do again. I've written for more blogs than I care to list here, sometimes for a short time, sometimes for years, and then lost those positions for a variety of reasons. I'm still at Neatorama, but I've gone from a fairly full-time salaried position to just a couple of posts a day, since I'm at full retirement age and am no longer desperate for the money. I prioritize my time differently now, doing real-life stuff first and then fitting online stuff around it. 

I've told the origin story of this blog ad nauseam in several other blogiversary posts, so I don't need to go over it again (however, I almost always link to the first post). As I write this, Miss Cellania has 45,155 published posts, and that doesn't even count a few years worth from the time I was posting on Squarespace. Those were supposed to be exportable, but it didn't work. There are also 29,700+ comments. I appreciate each and every one.

By now, this blog is second nature, and seems to write itself. I've learned how to get it done without beating myself up over it. Oh, that doesn't mean I don't care- I very much do. I don't care about hits, or SEO, or revenue, or going viral. I care about sharing entertaining, interesting, and/or informative stuff with people who care to visit. I also love how you guys add extra layers of humor or understanding to the posts with your comments. And the stories you tell! Some of you have become good friends, and all of you seem like sort of a community, peeps if you will, and I love that. So this is as good a time as any to THANK YOU for coming around here all these years, and let's do a few more!