In case you didn’t notice all the celebrating going on around here, this blog turned 10 years old today. Ten years ago to this very day, I spent about three hours configuring my first LiveJournal, wrote a pretty short, pretty pointless post, and rushed out the door to a party.

Then all of this happened. Plus some other stuff.

And here we are, a decade later. At first when I thought about the fact that I’ve been blogging for almost a third of my life, I was surprised. I’m kind of the most noncommittal person I know. But then I remembered that I started writing in my first diary on December 25, 1987 at the age of six. Really, the only difference was that I didn’t have internet access yet.

I used to carry around these little notebooks in my purse. I would write down funny things that occurred throughout the day and refer back to them later when I was ready to type out a post. Then along came MySpace and Facebook to start draining me of all my good ideas long before I could get around to blogging them.

As the internet, social networking and blogging grew up around me, I thought maybe I could make money off my site if I blogged about more products or material objects that people could buy. I was interested in clothes and photography, so I started a second blog to write about style and fashion. I tried focusing on a topic, growing my readership, and “writing for my audience,” but I felt so materialistic and fake. Plus, keeping up with a second blog was like having a split personality. Lots of times I felt like I couldn’t live up to the persona I created on the second blog, but other times I felt completely the opposite — as though that blog wasn’t really living up to me. So, I merged all my favorite posts over to this blog, shut the second one down, and proceeded to have an eight-month-long identity crisis about the name and subject matter. =)

It’s kind of incredible that after 10 years of doing it, I’m not a better, more “successful” blogger. I don’t have thousands of followers, millions of comments or any idea how to monetize this site. That used to bother me. I thought, “People must think I’m really stupid to just write in a blog for no reason.”

But the thing is, I’ve realized I don’t care about any of those things or what anyone else thinks. I’ve always loved my blog for exactly what it is — a random collection of thoughts and anecdotes I don’t mind sharing with the world. Concentrating on one topic is so not my strong suit. Clothes, food and vacations are not what defines me as a person. And as for my audience…no offense, but I don’t really care what you want to read. Because there’s no one on this earth that loves to read this blog more than I do. And if I could only read one blog for the rest of my life, it would be this one. Over and over again. I assume that if you come here, you want to read whatever I write, and I’m the best at writing when I’m writing whatever I want.

That being said, it also turns out having other people write my blog posts isn’t such a bad idea either. I had these grand plans about choosing my 10 favorite posts and sharing them with you, but then I realized I’m way too narcissistic to pick just 10 favorites. So, I delegated that task to some of my favorite friends/loyal readers. I’m getting better at that — delegating. =)

I’m so grateful for all of my guest bloggers over the last 10 days. All your posts made me feel like I was hosting the best party in the world, where my blog was the guest of honor and all my favorite people were in attendance. And since most of you are either expecting newborns, scattered around the country, or way behind on your Christmas shopping, having you all right here was the perfect alternative to celebrating in real life. Cheers to you, my friends. Your words are worth a thousand pictures in this case, and here’s hoping we’ll all be sitting around re-reading them for the next 10 years.

So, there you have it. Ten years, 722 published posts, 1,684 comments, and I have no idea how many views because there was no way to track that until 2010. Coming up next: the usual Year in Review, Final Resolution Update of 2013 and next year’s list. Oh, and whatever the f- else I feel like posting. =)

I hope you’ll stick around, but I’ll still be here writing either way.

Peace out.

Lisa

This crazy trip has got me feelin’:  accomplished
And I’m singin’ along to: She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5