Today marks the end of my 10th year blogging on the bava. That’s almost a quarter of my life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: starting and maintaining this blog regularly over the last 10 years was the single best thing I’ve ever done professionally.
My blog turns 10 years old on Sunday. Best damn thing I ever did professionally bar nothing.
— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) December 11, 2015
I’ve exorcised many a professional demon on this blog, and hatched a few as well. With almost 3000 posts and more than 13,000 comments, the bava has become part of a larger collection of ideas I’ve shared with so many folks who helped shape them. It’s an amazing archive of my less than amazing thinking. And despite having always been a terrible writer, I have always wanted to write. Good writing takes talent and dedication. I never really found the talent part, but this blog helped me tackle the dedication bit. But then again, it’s only ever aspired to the status of b-blog, so the writing hsa always been held to a strict standard of less-than-great.
The bava continues to provide a space entirely free of the constraints of academic and professionalized writing—things that immediately freeze both my brain and my pen. Something as simple and unassuming as a blog has proven absolutely liberating for my work, and has continually fueled my passion for helping folks take control of their own personal spaces on the web. A see the bava as the most virtuous of cut-rate circles.
10 years on, as I sit perched high above the internet in my reclaimed Italian Villa perusing the valley from whence I climbed, I can only say this: “IT WAS ALL WORTH IT!”* But no time to gloat, I have some blogging to do 🙂
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*Thanks for that, Scott Leslie. 🙂
Thunderous applause, sir. Thunderous applause.
Always loved Bryan, always loved you 🙂
My friend, Sean Ziebarth, and I read George Sirc’s English Composition As A Happening last summer and he created a slew of images in response to Sirc’s ideas: https://twitter.com/search?f=images&vertical=default&q=%23sircsummer&src=typd
I love anyone that is reclaiming writing from the tyranny of “academic writing.” I just stumbled across your Twitter account and this blog thanks to a tweet from Urbie Delgado. I’m looking forward to seeing how you approach things. Thanks for your persistence.