Happy 7th Blogiversary to Me!

I never thought I’d be writing this blog post.

Seven years ago today, on September 1, 2005, I started a blog. I called it Martin’s Musings.

Really, I did so by accident. A friend had started a blog, and to comment on one of her posts, I had to create an account on Blogger.com. So all of a sudden I had a blog of my own.

In those early days, I had no real direction or raison d’être, and the random stuff I posted reflected that.

But over time, as I got the hang of blogging, and started to understand how it worked, Martin’s Musings got better and started to gain some legitimacy.

Sites like UniversalHub.com and Boston.com started to link to my posts, and the stuff I was writing was often excerpted in the Boston Globe. That gave me more of a following.

People would take issue with things I wrote — my criticism of Johnny Cupcakes, for example, or my recap of my 10-year college reunion.

Local PR firms saw things I’d written and invited me to events (like the grand opening of the new Star Market in Chestnut Hill) or they referenced my blog when they’d see me out and about.

Posts like my reviews of I Am Legend and Juno became top-ranked results on Google — the result of good headline writing — and traffic started to come to me from all around the world.

It was pretty cool.

Then social media happened, and the type of things I was posting on my blog instead showed up on Twitter and/or Facebook, in much shorter form. Martin’s Musings became mostly a hub for my movie reviews. I just didn’t have the patience for writing my own stuff, especially since my full-time job required me to write and edit multiple blog posts on a daily basis.

Martin’s Musings was petering out, and I didn’t want to admit it.

And then, in the past year, things changed again.

I left my job, and among the things I did with my newfound free time, I refocused my time, attention, and energy on my blog. I changed platforms, started to write more often, started to write about other topics in addition to the movie reviews, changed and (in some ways) improved my writing, became a smarter blogger, let people subscribe and share, and in essense, brought my blog back to life.

Now, Martin’s Musings is better than it’s ever been, and it’s celebrating its seventh birthday. Woo hoo!

I thought one year was cool. But seven is even cooler.

Today I’m celebrating that I’ve been a blogger for seven years. I’m celebrating that I’ve published a total of 1,607 blog posts. I’m celebrating that more people are reading my blog now than ever before. I’m celebrating that people are commenting on my blog posts more often. I’m celebrating that people are tweeting, “liking,” and sharing my blog posts.

And perhaps most importantly, I’m celebrating that I’m more passionate about blogging now than I’ve been in a long time.

Thank you to everyone out there who has read this blog, commented on the posts, subscribed, shared what I’ve written, and encouraged me to keep going. I promise to keep on keeping on for at least another year.

But in the meantime, please allow me to give myself more than a few pats on my back today.

Happy blogiversary to me!

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