What’s Blogging? Sounds Painful!

That title was actually the title of the first post made to this blog — or what would become this blog — exactly five years ago today. November 2004 seems like a really long, long time ago. I can’t think of a five year period in my lifetime whose start was so different from its finish, with the possible exception of 1988-1993, when we went from Cold War to New World Order to Deep Recession. (Ha! Remember that recession? It seems so cute now!)

Five years ago, you didn’t need two healthy hands to count the number of association people blogging. Most of the folks who were really active back then are less so now; we’ve all gotten older and moved on. A lot of the original clumpers are focused now on Twitter and post blogs much less frequently, and a few have left the online media sphere altogether. It’s the nature of life and of communications vehicles.

(Speaking of Twitter, my minimal work there is primarily focused on the industry in which I work rather than associations; in response to several requests, I finally caved and created a Twitter profile connected to this blog and for general stuff about association management. You will find it @associationinc though I can’t promise a whole lot of activity there.)

Anyhoo … no reflections or deep thoughts on five years of blogging to share, because hey, it’s just blogging. And to be honest, I do it in such fits and starts (having once gone nearly a year between posts) that I’m not sure I can say it’s been five full years. I see it’s been six weeks since my last full article and I never know how long a gap between posts is going to stretch. Much like the breaths we draw, I never know which post will be my last.

I don’t foresee stopping for good any time soon, though. It’s fun to have a place to explore new ideas, comment on trends, and occasionally vent or rant. (Though sometimes I think my most interesting articles in that regard have been the ones I didn’t publish …) It’s very gratifying that there are still some folks reading, and I always enjoy a good comments discussion. Thanks for coming along.