Happy Birthday Dear Blog

It was a year ago today that I posted my first article on this blog. Quite unbelievable, since it feels like I've been ranting and raving on this thing for much longer.

It's been a strange experience, at times therapeutic, at others philosophical with the remaining just serving as a written record of what I've been up to. I'm not sure if I'll ever read back the things I have written (not in any meticulous detail, anyway) but it's nice to have something to back up this creaking memory of mine; I wish I had started one much earlier than I did since there have been important dates in my like that I'd have liked to record (like Hajj, Bolly Star and running a marathon).

And it's because of this written record I've now managed to collate the following statistics. In the last year I have:

• Seen 48 films in the cinema
• Added 63 music tracks to my playlist
• Retold 10 snippets
• Read 16 books
• Reported 11 Choices
• Linked 22 times
• Made 12 television recommendations
• Played 16 videogames
  
• Made one new friend via the blog itself

Unfortunately Blogger is a bit poo in that I cannot work out exactly how may posts I have written, but there have been at least 300 as of December last year. Blimey. Other things that have been recorded are the new friends I've made, activities like Acting and First-aid classes, holidays and weddings I've been to and pretty girls I've seen on the tube.

Despite the constants above, I think the blog itself has changed over the last 12 months. What initially started as a place for me to post articles (of topics I had always been thinking of and discussing with friends about) became more of a dumping ground as I ran out of such things. Posts have become shorter and more objective and so perhaps pointless.

Still, I've struggled to keep it up and I like to think that I'm doing ok, and I won't mention by name the blogs that have risen and fallen (and sometimes risen again) around me. Apart from instilling some kind of pride in me, I hope that I can take it as a sign that I'm doing something right.

This last observation may even go some way to validate some of the principles by which I run this blog; things like not commenting on my own articles, minimising the literal naming and focusing on of specific people, and not writing about the private issues of others even if I happen to share them.

Anyway, here are some of the more, in my opinion, notable posts:

• It cant be that easy... can it?, my first "long" post and probably the reason I started my blog when I did.
• I Am a Freak, full of self analysis and indulgence, a bit of a bare all really.
• Hey Babee... How you Doin'?, still irrefutable.
• Religion is Subjective, my first article regarding Islam.
• One Of My More Favourite Forwards, because it was one of the rare forwards that I actually liked and kept.
• The Blind Eye Of The Beholder, purely because it seemed nobody understood this except me.
• Feelin' Alive, and its surrounding posts for recording a fantastic weekend.
• The Death Of Spammy, for marking a pretty important change in identity. So sad.
• Shak's Choice, do I need a reason here?
• Dubai, Baby, and its surrounding posts for recording a fantastic holiday.
• Plan Of Action, for the yet to be beaten response and discussion in the aftermath.

So what of the next year? Well the last wasn't particularly active but I managed to squeeze out a few posts a week and I have more than a feeling that the next will have even more for me to talk about. I've also got a few emergency draft posts for the times when it doesn't.

Anyway, that's enough recursion for a morning. I hope you've enjoyed or at least found curious this blog over the last year, and I hope that you decide to pop in from time to time to see where it goes in the next.

Thanks for reading, and apologies for any offending typos.