For the love of blog

This is exactly how I look when I'm blogging...

5 years ago I sat down at my laptop one evening and Googled 'How to start a blog'. An hour later I had cobbled together a site and a single post and put it out there for the world (or as the case may be - nobody) to see.

I was naive, clueless and keen - and I thought I would probably last a week at this blogging business.

And now here I am over 250 weeks later pondering on all that has changed in that time. It's been a strange and winding road with never a dull moment. I've laid my heart out on a plate and held things inside until I felt fit to burst. It's become my creative outlet, my springboard, my go-to, my 'thing'. And I love it.

What's the point? I'm not sure there is a single point. For every blogger there's a different answer, a different raison d'etre. For me it's the writing and the creativity, the something you do because you're drawn to it - not because you're being paid, or you want to get published, or you have to. It's the place I can brain dump and work out that actually this is how I feel about that thing.

The other wonderful thing is that many of the bloggers I met online back in the day are still around - still sharing support, still following each others lives, still watching each other's kids grow up, still friends.

Six months after I started blogging I wrote this post: A beginner's guide to blogging.  It's nostalgic reading it now - remembering my newness and seeing the names of blogs on that list that have fallen by the wayside and the ones that are still walking side by side with me. Perhaps best of all though is that the list has grown to such a multitude now that I wouldn't even dream of trying to write a new one.

So instead I'll blow a big kiss out to the universe of bloggers and readers that have watched, helped, commented or clicked over the past five years.

Would I still be here if you hadn't?

Not a chance. I don't think I would have lasted a week.