Today marks five years of writing online. FIVE YEARS!

2002 – 105 posts
2003 – 226 posts
2004 – 344 posts
2005 – 431 posts
2006 – 624 posts
2007 – 324 posts as of today

My first post didn’t exactly set the internet on fire; I was babbling on about being a university student and not getting enough sleep and incurable procrastination. In fact, I set up a blog to continue a fine tradition of procrastination and work avoidance. It’s still there, for posterity.

When Claude from Blogging in Paris wrote about her third blogiversary last month, she posted pictures of all the people she’d met through Flickr and her blog. When I got a chance to comment on that post, I thought it was hilarious that I was sitting in Claude’s living room on my computer while she was on hers, typing out the comment and talking to her at the same time! What a couple of geeks we are!

By the way, meeting Claude was an absolute riot — if there was ever a reason to have a personal website, meeting fellow bloggers like Claude is definitely one of them. And only in 2007 could retirement mean shooting 20,000 photos, posting them online, and sharing technical information with a Canadian girl “just passing through Paris on her way back from Iceland”, then writing about it practically in realtime.

This website will always be a work in progress. Earlier today I was fixing old posts, uploading old photos to Flickr to replace Blogger-hosted ones, reformatting text, filing posts in categories, etc. I didn’t get far, maybe only a month of posts. It sounds like a lot of work for something that doesn’t pay the rent, but it’s a personal project that I take pride in and it’s brought me a lot of joy over the years. Sometimes I get lost in the archives, reminiscing when my nieces and nephew were babies and toddlers, the adventures I’ve had while travelling, people I’ve met, photos and video I’ve taken of special events, and reading funny comments people have written. Sometimes when I can’t remember details from a certain time, I return to this website and use it as reference.

So much has happened to me since I started writing here (from Blogger), I can scarcely believe it. Even when I was working on fixing posts from July 2004, just three years ago, I noticed that the subject matter was completely different: writing about taking a ferry to go to work, griping about whether or not to go to my friend’s wedding alone or find a date to drag along, and experiencing an earthquake. As I work my way through the archives, I’m marking my favourite posts — also a work in progress as there are currently 2,054 including this one.

I can see my writing and photography evolving over the years, too.

The #1 draw to this website these days via search engines is aviation-related, mostly people researching Piper Tri-Pacers. I love that people stop to read David’s four-part story of how he bought Zero-Two-Papa and flew it up from Tennessee. Not only is it an interesting story, it’s a way for me to share a bit of David with people around the globe who also love to fly like he did — the old-fashioned way, with wires and fabric-covered wings.

As much as I write online, it will never be a substitute for the real thing, though: communicating with people in person. I can feel myself becoming much more sociable again, compared to 2006. I’m meeting more people, engaging in more activities, settling into a comfortable familiarity with Toronto, and making plans.

It’s been a roller-coaster of a ride, the last five years. I don’t know how long you’ve been reading, but thanks for checking in!