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?