Ten years a blog

It is hard to believe that ten years ago today I first sat at my laptop and wrote a blog post.

Back then I was in the post first time general election candidate daze, but was already thinking about how I could do more to get myself recognised and my views heard ahead of the next election at some point before 2010. Back then the blog title was Stephen's Linlithgow Journal as back then anything I thought I would stand for as a Liberal Democrat candidate had the word Linlithgow in the title. Of course when it came to be going for selection in 2010 for the Edinburgh Central seat I didn't want to see five years of thoughts lost to the general public, so I changed the URL and the title to the current title.

Little did I realise that across the blog I would have over 1 million page views back then I was just looking for a way to reach out to the 70,000 or so voters who lived in the catchment area that I thought I would be reaching out to for a number of years. Of course I also didn't realise that circumstance would cause me to move three times within 4 years from the area that I had come to consider home back then in 2005.

Of course another thing that really impacted on my blog was the sudden death of Robin Cook in the summer of 2005. My blog up until that point had a limited readership, but then I became the go to blog (not just Liberal Democrat) for the ensuing by election. To suddenly go from 10-20 readers a day to upwards of 500 on certain days of course made me change the way I went about my blogging. It moved from being largely about local issues, though they would still exist, into a more national outlook on things. Sadly of course with such a high profile death at the start of my decade of blogging there was of course the leader of my Party then Charles Kennedy's also sudden death at the other end of these first 10 years.

My blogging diversified down the years and I realised that I was almost blogging as much about sport as politics, indeed at some points of the year more so. So I set up a secondary blog that focused on the sport, Stephen's Sporting Almanac but of course as soon as I did that I lost a little of the mojo and stopped blogging as much on both blogs. This may also have come about from the fact that I was no longer blogging on the bus ride into work in the morning which had instilled a certain discipline into me finding something to write about, but was also down probably to a large part to the continuous search for work after the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign. Of course I took a step back then from political blogging in the same way as I had to work closely with people of other parties.

But somehow I have managed to struggle through and kept on blogging. So here we are today celebrating 10 years as a blogger. I've seen many people give up in that time, many start to greater or lesser success, others move to collaborative blogs, but I have maintained a one person blog for 10 years now. The output has not always been at the same level but I hope that every now and then a little gem comes from the tapping I do wherever and whenever the mood strikes me.

 I'm now in the post third time General Election candidate haze, and looking for how to work for the Lib Dem Fight Back after the poor showing on 7 May. Having stood a second time in Linlithgow and East Falkirk in 2010 and in Sedgefield this year. Sometime soon I expect you'll see me going for selection ahead of 2020.

Will I still be blogging in 10 years time? Who knows, but I'm not for giving up just now.