Milestones

This blog is a year old today! Strictly speaking, it won’t be a year old until this evening, but I don’t want to wait until then to write. Sometime last week, I realised this momentous milestone was arriving, so I’ve been thinking about what I would write to commemorate the occasion, but I haven’t come up with anything in particular.

I don’t know why I am lost for words this morning. Maybe I am still recovering from having just finished writing my two conference papers for Click 06 in September. Maybe I am too much in holiday mode already. Maybe it is also hard to write about what the whole blogging experiment, without going all mushy which is why I am consciously and unconsciously resisting it writing it down. (It doesn’t help that I don’t have the usual deadline of having to get ready for work this morning.)

In any case, I can also commemorate the other anniversary – today also marks a year since I started with the early rising experiment. It’s been a year of getting up at 5am! It’s no longer an experiment though, because after a year I am now really used to it and usually wake up even if the alarm doesn’t go off.

I wish I’d thought to write down what the morning of 7 June 2005 was like. This morning hasn’t been particularly cold – at 5am, it was 9.8°C, the sky was cloudy, and outside there was a definite tinge of smoke to the air. Woody smelling smoke, maybe a neighbour’s wood fire. There are supposed to be the odd “shower or two, clearing this morning” but the air doesn’t feel like it’s going to rain.

I think the early morning is easily my favourite time of day. It’s quiet, calm, and I love the feeling that the day’s possibilities are endless. I love watching the sky get lighter. The different blues as the sun rises as beautiful. I love listening to the birds as they rise – although there aren’t as many birds around in winter. In summer we have all sorts of birds – lots of galahs and doves and even the occasional kookaburra. I even love listening to the noises of the traffic outside as more and more people get on the road on their way to work (this sounds even better when you don’t have to go yourself!).

Having the extra couple of hours everyday has also been a real boon. It’s definitely given me the time to blog and to read. In fact I’m not sure if I would still be blogging, without the 5am starts. As for blogging – you may still be wondering why I mentioned being mushy about it? Well, it’s easy for me to get mushy about blogging because it’s given me such a lot. (Or maybe it’s just easy for me to get mushy about blogging because I can get too sentimental for my own good at times.)

When I started looking at blogs and blogging last year I was very sceptical. I could see how it might be fun on a personal level but I couldn’t see any value in it at all, especially from a professional perspective. Over the year, though, I have ‘met’ so many interesting and vibrant people and learned so much. It’s made a huge difference to my professional life (heck, without blogging I probably wouldn’t have been inspired enough to get off my bum and write not one, but two conference papers.)

I enjoy the whole range of blogs that I read – from the Great and Wonderful World of the Biblioblogosphere*, through to all the blogs by people here in Perth and around Australia and all over the world, and blogs about books, games, technology, languages, families, food, dogs, and.. HOORAY FOR THE BLOGOSPHERE! I think all I really wanted to write was just that, and now I have.

*blogs by library people

Note: I began this post at 5:47am and finished it at 8:39am.

Categories: anniversary, experiments