18 Years of Blogging
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
One of the most rewarding things about writing online and doing so fairly regularly is the fact that over time you build up a body of work. This iteration of Contains Moderate Peril has approximately 2000 posts. Some of them aren’t too shabby. I certainly think that writing consistently for 18 years has improved the standard of my writing and helped me develop my own style. Writing has a multitude of benefits which is why I continue to do so. There’s the community aspect of blogging and the sharing of ideas and interests. Then there is writing to order your thoughts and to try and make sense of the world. I find this extremely therapeutic. It takes a degree of confidence to stick your head above the parapet and express an opinion online. As a result, writing has played an important role in my life and been beneficial to my mental wellbeing.
Blogging has also led to numerous online friendships that I value greatly. I take the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging seriously because it can be a beneficial experience to new and returning bloggers. Modern life is fast paced and there are so many things competing for our attention. Writing online has given way to video and audio content. Social media, an even briefer medium, has diminished the popularity of the written word even further. However, you’ll find no nuance in a meme or tik tok. Hence they are blunt tools. The written word can express the complexities and range of human emotions far more effectively. They can also speak truth to power. Which is why I think it’s important that people keep writing and expressing themselves in this way. With that in mind, I shall continue blogging and maintaining my corner of the internet. Will that be for another 18 years? We’ll see.
Roger Edwards