10 Years of No Apathy Allowed

Andes Mountains, Peru | No Apathy Allowed
A photo from one of my first travel posts during a trip to Peru in 2005

About this time 10 years ago, I started a blog.  In those days, hardly anyone blogged under their real name. Hardly anyone posted photos of themselves. Hardly anyone made blogging their career.  Ten years ago, blogging felt like a small community rather than a mega-blogosphere.

Back then, I blogged about life in New York. Sometimes sharing short ideas or thoughts that today are more likely to make their way into a tweet than into a blog post.  I was living with a roommate in Park Slope, paying our rent in cash to our landlords Vinnie and Mario, and running loops of Prospect Park with friends.  I had just earned a fancy master’s degree and was making way too little money trying to save the world.

Ten years ago, No Apathy Allowed got its first start on Friendster (anyone still remember Friendster?), before landing on WordPress with its very own domain name.  Blogging was more of a way to communicate with my friends and family in Seattle than with the world.

That was nearly 900 posts and almost 2000 comments ago.  I don’t know if I could have possibly imagined that I would still be blogging 10 years later from my apartment in the north of Germany, with a landlord named Volker, a doctor title in front of name, and still trying to save the world.

Amazingly, there are still a few blogs in existence that have inspired me since nearly day one, like the talented Hula Seventy, who also just recently celebrated 10 years, and Marianne Elliott from what was then Frida’s Notebook.  These days I couldn’t even begin to recount all of the blogs that inspire me to keep writing, keep sharing, and keep reading.

So let me raise a glass to blogging, especially to everyone who’s read along all these years, and to many more years of No Apathy Allowed!

How long have you been blogging?  Or reading blogs?  How have things changed for you over the past 10 years?

17 comments

  1. joelix says:

    So much has changed in the blogosphere in the past decade! I’ll celebrate my 10 years on JOELIX.com next year, but have been blogging on a private family blog since 2001. We are blog-dinosaurs, right?! I think the thing that changed the most, is that it used to be so much more private (like you said, we didn’t blog with our own names!) and the channels to get yourself heard/seen/read are so much more diverse now. I remember reading longer and more personal blogposts ten years ago. Today’s blogposts are often shorter, faster and not always very personal. The little bit of mystery about the blogwriter was so nice! But here we are, still blogging, right?! Happy bloganniversary, Mandi! Here’s to another decade of blogging!

    • Yes, you’re so right! I do miss some of the more thoughtful, more personal posts as compared to the shorter, superficial and more frequent posts so common these days. But yes, we’re still here and still adapting. Here’s to many more years!

  2. Sandra L. says:

    Mandi, I love your blogs. You are such a great writer. I am always excited to see a new post and learn what’s happening in your world and what you are excited about. Don’t stop! Love you so much.

  3. Di says:

    My blog was 8 in January and although I post infrequently I still do occasionally blog- mostly for my own benefit, creating a diary of my trips and activities. I don’t so much enjoy the commercial nature of blogs and miss many of those from the early days that are no longer posting.

    Congratulations on 10 years! I have been enjoying your blog for the last 8 years or so!!

    • Thanks, Jordan! When you think about the fact that we both doing this for fun in our free time, especially given how much time we devoted to it, any length of time seems pretty amazing. :) Hope you’re enjoying your summer before starting back to grad school!

  4. cliff1976 says:

    Whoa. Your post reminded me that I completely missed our 10-year blogging anniversary as well.

    I’ve been feeling “old” at work lately — same job, same department, a lot of the same stuff, but with lots of new people (except Yours Truly, of course) and an old buddy from a previous incarnation of the department said “Meh. You might feel old now, but wait until you hit 40. Then you just won’t care!”

    Happy Anniversary!

    • Wow, congrats also on a decade of the Regensblog! My own anniversary was actually back in June, but I just couldn’t get it together to write a post on time. Better late than never, right? I prefer the term “wise” to old — you are the holder of a lot of institutional knowledge, as they say. That’s a very valuable thing these days!

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