Happy Decade

Ten years ago today, I wrote my first post on this site:

Today’s Weather in Tokyo: hot and humid. (It is summer after all!)

Thus began a decade of online diary entries, essays, rants, whinges, and celebrations. I am so very glad that I created a record of so much of my life.

You've received 2,999 entries including 237 recipes, 27 audio recordings, 37 tutorials, a 3-year series on creativity, a one-year series of forty word portraits, and hundreds upon hundreds of other bits and bobs in the ever-changing landscape of my existence.

From my perspective, some of the best parts are unwritten: all the thoughts rattling in my head, the emotions I did not pour onto the page, the associated memories of times and places described. I can relive them any time I read through the mediatinker archives. You know a lot about me, but those unwritten memories layered over the entries are my own special secrets.

Now let me mark this anniversary entry by sharing one little interior vignette with you. At the time of the very first entry, I sat on the floor facing the air conditioner in the upstairs back room of the Marble House in Sendagi. My pasty white legs were glued with sweat to the scratchy tatami and I had a glass of water at hand. The sun beat down on the veranda; the metal steps to the playharbour were too hot to climb. I sat on the floor because my computer was propped up on a box; I had no desk then. I felt sticky and cranky and quite uncertain that Blogger was going to work for me. I wondered if blogs might just be a fad that everyone was going through and maybe I'd be better off keeping up my mailing list and regular website. But I wrote the first entry anyway, laughing to myself that someday I'd regret having written something so banal for the premiere entry to my new website.

And that's the story behind the first post. I'll bet you didn't realise one dull sentence could hold so much information. If you don't keep a journal of some sort, I hope this encourages you to do so because even the mundane can trigger special memories to the author.

Lots of things have changed since 2000: the technology, my passions, my goals and certainly my hair color. And as it turns out, some things haven't changed. It's hot and humid ten years later; I'm still sticky, pasty white, and have water at hand. And I'm still a little cranky.