With 15 years of blogging under my belt, I feel I’ve hit a new stage of the journey. This is a summary of my past blogging, how I see myself and SplittingTens today, and if I’ll keep doing it.

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The Early Days: Bansheemann7

I started blogging in 2009 for three reasons:

1. I thought I had something to say
2. I thought blogs would be popular in the future
3. Tom blogged

Reading some of those Livejournal posts is mind numbing. In college I transitioned to www.bansheemann7.com but the content stayed the same.

In these days I was hard-headed and opinionated. Notably though, I wanted to share my opinions. I’d write confidently uninformed takes with little sense of the grander picture and no self-consciousness. Lots of stupid hot takes, things like people driving too slow in the fast lane thinking I was the first person to recognize it. That’s what being an adolescent is though.

As time went on posting became more of an obligation than a desire. Things like weekend recaps, daily observations, etc. were usually a drag to write. Eventually I was writing those for the sake of a new post appearing if someone visited. While some posts were fun to write, most of the time I was just relieved to have something new up, no matter how shitty.

What baffles me the most about my blogging from 2009 – 2018 is how much I posted. For years I’d post four or five times a week. That’s insane to me now.

Most will say this was the Golden Age of my blogging, but to me it’s the Dark Ages. www.bansheemann7.com is no more. There are nearly 2000 posts lost in history, most of which had no real purpose, I was just aimlessly writing (as if I’m so purposeful today).

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2018 – Today: SplittingTens

In 2018 Tom and I created SplittingTens. At this point, my tone as a blogger and as a person was changing. I was taking the wise advice of “talk less, listen more“, which may be good for me as an individual, but it doesn’t make for very entertaining blog posts!

So as we arrived at SplittingTens, I began phasing out two things:

1) Writing posts I didn’t care about – Filler posts are the death of joy and creativity as a blogger. These days, if I go a week or two without posting, I don’t feel like I’m letting anyone down the way I used to. It’s funny to even write that, the idea that I was ‘letting people down‘ by not posting gives my blogging way too much credit.

2) Having hot takes – The idea that I used to forecast the entire NFL playoffs feels stupid to me now. There are literally thousands of more informed people publishing their picks online. Or my take on political issues. I used to think I had worthy takes on everything, but now I feel like I’m generally uninformed and my takes are rarely worth putting out.

“We get it, you hate blogging, what the hell are you still doing here?“

So far this post has just shit on my entire blogging experience, so why do I keep doing it?

1) The historical record – As ridiculous as some of the posts are, going back and reading my life and my thoughts from 10 years ago is very entertaining. 10 years from now, I’ll be happy that this exists to reflect on, and I’m surprised more people don’t do something similar.

2) More importantly, I like writing – I like formulating my thoughts in an organized way and presenting an them. That’s why I’ve enjoyed this “Things I Think About” series; I take my time with these posts and they’re topics I actually want to explore. When I post these, I feel good about putting it out there, even if they’re not well received. Take this post for example, there’s not even a real point to it, but it’s something I’ve thought a lot about, and I like putting that down.

But these aren’t the only posts I like! Story telling, like when that guy cucked me at the speak easy, or asking for advice, of which I’ve gotten a ton of from readers, are also fun posts to write.

3) Readership? – Is the ‘goal’ of this blog to increase readership? If so, we should quit now because we suck at that. It begs the question would I still blog if I had no readers? I like the idea of friends reading what I post, and I appreciate the ones that actually read and especially comment, no matter how sarcastic.

If literally no one read, I would stop. Does that mean I’m trying to post things that my readers want to read? I don’t think many readers will like this post, but I like this post, so it’s a balance of those two things.

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2023 – ?: When’s My Final Blog Post

When will the ride end? Will I still be blogging when I’m 50? Will I really have a 15 year old kid getting made fun of at school because their dad has a blog? I think the answer is yes.

I don’t have any plans to stop writing, so as long as people keep reading and I keep having things to write about, the blog will live on.