It is exactly ten years from today I started this blog. For twelve years (closed in 2010) I ran a graffiti site that was quite popular. After quitting illegal graffiti and running the site for so long I signed off with a graffiti blog and closed the main graffiti site. The graffiti blog is still running but I haven’t posted to it in years. Even though this blog is nowhere near as successful as my graffiti blog or site I still find it rewarding. I originally started this blog as a way of exploring recovery options for mental issues. I started with poetry and rather raucous posts that were meant to be funny but offensive as well. After a few years, I deleted some of my original posts even though I wish I hadn’t. I think this blog is pretty useless in that it doesn’t provide any practical information but is quite creative at times. Most of my poetry I didn’t publish on the blog in the beginning. I simply stored it digitally for a decade and only last year released most of the therapy poems I wrote as a book. Last year I managed to search the blog through a text-based browser for poems and saw the general gravel grinding of this decade long effort of ruminating. If it wasn’t for this blog I never would have been able to write my books. I think exploring ideas in this blog eventually lead to subtle connections that became a story or two. Some of my books are garbage but at least I tried to bring disparate efforts together and get ideas off my chest. I feel embarrassed by some of my books and have probably lost some credibility with some people yet I managed to do something creative while having general ups and downs with mental health. It was 23 years ago I started designing websites and by 2005 I had a CMS system that ran until 2010. The CMS was set up by a friend and made life easy. In 2013 I finished a web design course which was my only qualification in web design and in 2015 I designed a WordPress system from scratch for a client. Then I got sick of web design. 

This site was just a free site that required no set-up from me or design skills. I started it in 2011 and just added content. I added a domain name and after years upgraded the site for more functionality that required nothing more than pressing some buttons from me. I sometimes think that in the next few years I may retire this website. I probably wouldn’t delete it but just let it sit with no domain name in obscurity like my graffiti blog has been doing. Yet this site is still useful for my creative process currently. I know one friend who has about twenty blogs all dedicated to various interests. The blogs are practical and useful unlike what I have been doing. Yet I have appreciated blogging as a form of therapy and I occasionally read other blogs as an interest. I probably haven’t really connected with a big community on WordPress but I find it interesting and worthwhile.