Well, not me. My blog, actually. Nine years ago today, Yourish.com (the blog) was launched. In those days, I coded HTML with Dreamweaver and a year or so later created permalinks by hand. In those days, maybe three people read my blog, counting myself. When I got up to 200 visits a day, I thought I’d really made it big. I wrote about tech and personal issues back then, not current events. Not until 9/11, anyway. Things changed after that.
The spring of 2002 is when this blog turned into a Jewish and Israeli issues-oriented blog. So that would mean I’ve been pissing off anti-Semites for eight years. I intend to keep on doing so for a long, long time.
Would you believe—I know, you’re not going to—that in the early days, I refused to publish cat pictures because it was already a cliché that the internet was the place for cat pictures?
I’ve been called many things over the past nine years, but I would like to put a stop to one of them: I am not the “grand dame of the JBlogosphere.” Sure, I was here early, maybe even first. Imshin was around back then, and Tal. Omri was an upstart. But I’m not that old, dammit! (Definitely not. I was the youngest person at my condo board meeting last night. I was wrong when I said my buying here dropped the median age by ten years. I think it dropped by fifteen.)
A few things haven’t changed at all over the years. I’m on my second Tigger since I started the blog.
A few things have changed for the better. I think I’ve become a better writer, but that’s because the more I write, the better I get at it. I’m pretty proud of my essays, but I don’t write them often enough these days. The really amazing thing to me is that I’m still not tired of writing about the anti-Israel media bias, or the anti-Israel bias of most of the world. Oh, I go through times when I can’t stand it and have to post fluff and cat pictures. But overall, in spite of the fact that I can recycle my older posts, change out “Arafat” with “Abbas” and “Sharon” with “Netanyahu” and nobody would know the difference, I’m still not done shouting to the rooftops that the world is treating Israel—and Jews—badly. And I’m still not letting the bastards get me down. You hate me? Right back atcha, mouth-breathers. I’m the Islamists’ worst nightmare: A smart, educated, Jewish woman with guns. (Who will be heading to the range with “The Moms” in a week or two to teach a few more women how to shoot, two of whom are also Jewish. Heh.)
Oh, yeah. That’s something that’s changed a lot. When I started this blog, I was anti-handgun. Now I have a .38 revolver on my nighttable. I’m putting that under the “change is good” column.
Another year passes. I’m looking forward to celebrating my first full decade of blogging this time next year. So stay tuned. I’m not going anywhere. And if anyone is here who read my blog in 2001, sound off. All three of you.
Mozzil Tove! Nine years is a very respectable age for a blog – it means you started blogging when the standard Internet connection was a Dixie cup and a USB thread.
Keep up the excellent work. Yours is an important voice in the blogosphere… and besides that, you’re a daily read.
[Time to start working on your next Haftarah!]
mazel tov! nine years blogging makes you positively ancient in internet years.
what was it like blogging with the dinosaurs? ;)
Mazel Tov and thank you for letting me become part of your blog.
And I still remember when you got the better of Andrew Sullivan about the booing of Wolfowitz at the pro-Israel rally April 15, 2002.
That puts you on the first-year list, then. Wow, I didn’t realize you’d been reading me this long.
I’d also completely forgotten this:
That was eight years ago. Well, I still loathe Tom Delay and was never really fond of Ashcroft. I’m still for all those issues. But I don’t want, and will probably never again vote for, a Democratic Congress.
Well, I started my blog in 2002. A non-seminal moment because hardly anyone reads it. I’m fairly certain that I first stopped by in late 2001 or early 2002 though via a link from Glenn Reynolds. It might even have been one of your “Hulk smash!” posts.
So, long time reader, but only occasional commenter. Here’s looking at the next decade for your blog, and hopefully more after that.
Of course, in ten years, we’ll all be writing and reading posts telepathically, so your blog might change coding formats once again, say from WordPress to Mindpress.
Geez. I’m not even sure when I started reading. I was probably linked over from A Small Victory, given that Michele was one of my introductions to the blogosphere. I know it was post-9/11, but probably not by much. And I think I remember when you started posting cat pictures.
Then again, most of my memories are fuzzed together from mid-2001 to early-2004. Didn’t help that my first attempt at a blog went under pretty quickly, thanks to a Hosting Matters crash that lost most of my data, and had been corrupting my backups for about three months beforehand.
Here’s to another nine years of Israel, cats, snark, and Hulk! *raises glass*