A look back on 10 years of blogging.

When I had introduced myself at the blog camp, I had mentioned that I was an old-school blogger, as I've been blogging for about 10 years. Haha, for some reason, our lively host was impressed but chuckled, and joked that I had been blogging since I was 5 years old. No one really knew how old I was judging from my looks alone, ahehe.

Anyway, when I recalled that, I decided to take a trip to my old blogs. Let's have a look, shall we?


I started blogging way back in September 2001, and I had used DiaryLand. I came up with the username "tymeless" because I had already been using it before in chat rooms. It was unique, and it somehow suited me (those who really know me know why). The online diary, as it was called back then, was an outlet for me to write whatever I want without my mom having to go through my stuff (as I caught her repeatedly reading my actual diary before). I found out that posting those entries was really therapeutic. I could express what I was feeling without having to tell anyone, I could vent what was bothering me (I once made a scene in front of my friends, making a show of walking out, only to find myself at the computer lab, typing away an entry).

Then when I decided to make a personal website (which was starting to become quite a trend back then), I noticed a few online friends' sites had these weblogs, or a sort of news page for their site updates. I realized that I think I needed one of those.

I ended up finding a clean, decent platform with Pitas.com back in December 2001 , and learned how to design my own "blog." I also found a blogging community (Pinoybloggers) in the PinoyExchange forums, and we all started exchanging links and visiting each others' sites. One thing I didn't expect was that one of the bloggers there actually worked for Studio 23's Digital Tour, and for one of its episodes, they featured our blogs in one segment. It was nice to have a few seconds of fame.

Eventually, I befriended one of the bloggers in the forum, and he told me about this online journal platform that was perfect for me, albeit somewhat exclusive. We had to pay a certain fee to sign up, or we had to receive a certain code generated by someone who's already a member of that site. It was a sweet deal, he gave me a code for me to sign up, and in return, I generated a code for a friend of his.

So that's how I got into LiveJournal back when it wasn't free for everyone yet, way back in February 2002. I've been pretty loyal to it, as I'm still maintaining this site even until now. And I realized that because you can comment on entries, I actually enjoyed having an audience who reads them every once in a while, as I never learned how to attach a place for comments in my previous sites.


I also got an account at Blurty, which is sort of similar to LiveJournal, back in December 2002, and made it more private than the one in LJ. Eventually I turned it into a public blog when I found out that more of my friends from LJ also started signing up for Blurty. Sometime in 2003, I sort of abandoned LJ and focused on just updating my Blurty, until some sort of conflict within a circle of friends ensued, hence my reason to return to LJ, and even start using another place to blog.


That's how a bunch of my friends and I ended up at Tabulas in November 2003, where I really enjoyed blogging at during quite some time. I could also keep track of all my blogger friends by posting their links on the side bar, so once I'm on my page, their own blog was just a click away. By the way, I also still maintain this site, but I guess most of the links on the sidebar have been defunct for a while now.


Finally, there's Multiply, another place where my loyalties still lie since October 2006. I love that I can blog here, plus post photo albums and videos as well. Plus I loved the cross-posting options so it's very convenient for me. I never got around to using the tagging option when I post any entries, though. I guess that's how old-fashioned I still am.


Wow, that's a lot. I can't believe that I've been blogging (and baring part of my heart and soul all over the world wide web) for almost 10 years now. I once thought that I could gather all those posts and turn it into a book, but by now, I doubt it would probably take me another 10 years just to compile all of those, hahaha.

It's actually nice to look back at those old blogs. I randomly took a peek at one entry from each of those sites, and I just smiled at the memories, knowing that I survived all those obstacles, heartaches, and all the crazies that came my way for the past 10 years. Here's to 10 more years and even more.