Full Circle: A Blogger at 50 Looking Back - and Surprisingly Ahead
17/11/25When I first started blogging, the internet still smelled faintly of dial-up. Hardly anyone read blogs, which made writing one feel a bit like shouting into an empty gymnasium. Echoes everywhere, applause nowhere.
So imagine my surprise when the local newspaper called me. Yes, that newspaper—the one people actually read back then. They wanted to interview me as one of the region’s first bloggers. A pioneer! A digital explorer! A… person with three posts and a visitor count that mostly consisted of myself refreshing the page.
I declined, politely. Not because I didn’t appreciate the attention, but because the whole thing felt absurd. I wasn’t a “blogger”; I was just someone who typed things on the internet when I should’ve been asleep. It felt like being nominated for an award because I once baked a cake that didn’t collapse.
Fast-forward a few decades. I’m fifty now, and something strange has happened: we’re back where we started. Blogs again have almost no readers—but for entirely different reasons.
Back then, nobody read blogs because they didn’t know they existed. Now, nobody reads blogs because they know all too well what the internet has become: a swirling vortex of algorithms, notifications, and video clips designed to devour your attention before you can even blink, let alone scroll thoughtfully through a long-form reflection.
And here I am, still writing. Still shouting into what feels like that same old gymnasium—only now, someone’s holding a concert in the next hall, a dance recital in the lobby, a podcast in the corridor, and a dozen influencers are live-streaming from the parking lot. The echoes are harder to hear over the noise.
But the funny thing is: I’m not disappointed. There’s a certain freedom that comes with obscurity. No pressure. No expectations. No performance metrics to track or optimize. Just me, tapping away at the keyboard, much like I did decades ago.
Maybe blogging is less about being heard and more about noticing what you think when the world isn’t shouting back.
And if, by chance, someone reads this—well, that’s already more than I expected in 2004.
--- prompt ---
write me a blog post. It strikes met that I as a 50 year old had two similar ecperiences as a blogger. 1. In the early days the local newspaper called me up about my blog. They wanted an interview with one of the first local bloggers. I refused politely. at that time blogs had little to no readers 2. at this time blogs again have little to no readers becouse of completely different reasons. Make this into a captivating blog post. Use the principles of good story telling. Be a bit funny but no slapstick.
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So imagine my surprise when the local newspaper called me. Yes, that newspaper—the one people actually read back then. They wanted to interview me as one of the region’s first bloggers. A pioneer! A digital explorer! A… person with three posts and a visitor count that mostly consisted of myself refreshing the page.
I declined, politely. Not because I didn’t appreciate the attention, but because the whole thing felt absurd. I wasn’t a “blogger”; I was just someone who typed things on the internet when I should’ve been asleep. It felt like being nominated for an award because I once baked a cake that didn’t collapse.
Fast-forward a few decades. I’m fifty now, and something strange has happened: we’re back where we started. Blogs again have almost no readers—but for entirely different reasons.
Back then, nobody read blogs because they didn’t know they existed. Now, nobody reads blogs because they know all too well what the internet has become: a swirling vortex of algorithms, notifications, and video clips designed to devour your attention before you can even blink, let alone scroll thoughtfully through a long-form reflection.
And here I am, still writing. Still shouting into what feels like that same old gymnasium—only now, someone’s holding a concert in the next hall, a dance recital in the lobby, a podcast in the corridor, and a dozen influencers are live-streaming from the parking lot. The echoes are harder to hear over the noise.
But the funny thing is: I’m not disappointed. There’s a certain freedom that comes with obscurity. No pressure. No expectations. No performance metrics to track or optimize. Just me, tapping away at the keyboard, much like I did decades ago.
Maybe blogging is less about being heard and more about noticing what you think when the world isn’t shouting back.
And if, by chance, someone reads this—well, that’s already more than I expected in 2004.
--- prompt ---
write me a blog post. It strikes met that I as a 50 year old had two similar ecperiences as a blogger. 1. In the early days the local newspaper called me up about my blog. They wanted an interview with one of the first local bloggers. I refused politely. at that time blogs had little to no readers 2. at this time blogs again have little to no readers becouse of completely different reasons. Make this into a captivating blog post. Use the principles of good story telling. Be a bit funny but no slapstick.