One Year Tonight
by Tommy
or, A brief history of TimeTommy, erm, TrustTommy
Not quite, it’s actually tomorrow, Sunday, but since the actual Web Awards is on tonight, this post is still valid.
As I tell folks, this blog started in April of last year. I still remember it.. reading the blogs of two hilarious UK friends who are unfortunately no longer blogging, late one Saturday night. I had a blog before that. In fact, I’d had several. They were daily blogs too but I could never do it properly. Having to start every post with ‘sorry I haven’t blogged in y days’ got annoying after a while, especially when those around you (not literally, he was in MIT at the time) are emailing you asking where that new blogpost you promised was. Are promises that you make just to shut someone up still binding?
The blog I set up that Saturday night, I decided, was going to be different. Posting dates would be decided by me, no matter how many one line emails a certain US college IP address sent. Thus, TrustTommy was brought into existance, hosted on the lovingly-fragile Blogger.com servers. I believe posting frequency averaged about once every 2-3 days, and life was good.
That August, I got busy doing real-life stuff, as teenagers tend to do, right? The blog was neglected, almost to the point of a week. I was downstairs one night when I saw an @ reply on Twitter.
@TrustTommy Update your blog.. it’s beginning to smell
Can’t you just imagine the
With love, darling brother Patrick
that followed?
Heh, no. Needless to say I was annoyed. Look who’s talking, Mr. I-never-update-my-own-blog-and-when-I-do-it’s-with-odd-streams-of-*breath*-code-that-you-claim-makes-sense-but-probably-don’t. I replied to his tweet saying that, or something of equal indignation, and then something feverish clicked.
Right, you want personal blogging? Hmm? You want daily blogging? Right! I’ll show you I can do it! I’ll blog daily from now on, then will you be satisfied, eh?
A slightly odd thought process, but I was 14.. and we’re not renouned for crystal clear thinking, are we?
And so I began daily blogging from August 2008.
****
From August to October the blog grew. I used Twitter to meet new friends and having other, non-family people reading me meant that quitting would be much harder.
A blustery September was just rolling into an equally dreary October when I found about the Irish Web Awards. Not having a website, per sé, (there’s also the Irish Blog Awards for folks like me) I’d just be using such an evening to put faces to blog authors and Twitter folks. This was perfect.
So, October 11th 2008 came round, I went to drama class as normal and arrived home, wanting to get a definite answer as to whether I could go or not. Going on my own was, naturally, and understandably, out of the question, and John was reluctant to go. Eventually though, myself and Dad convinced John to bring me and I found myself on one of the old commuter trains to Limerick Junction, headed for the Radisson SAS, listening to The Dresden Dolls on John’s iPhone. They’re a great band, that I discovered that day. Told ya it was a good day.
Now, with a high (300ish, I believe, but I could be wrong.. It was a year ago and I was kinda drunk that night*) concentration of bloggers, twitterers, er ers and other assorted web folks meant that we couldn’t be the only web people on a train bound for Dublin that night. This was before I had my iPhone, so it was up to John to whip out his one and search nearby tweets. And who’d we see?
We got a taxi to the hotel and thus began a great night. I met a load of big bloggers and was so impressed at them that as we left, I said to John that I wanted to be like them – and blog properly. My blog was daily, but there was (and I’m allowed to say this, I’m the author) an awful lot of crap on it. I know there’s at least 4 people who would say it’s full of crap recently too – but this was different.
I also decided to move off lovingly-yet-still-really-annoyingly-fragile Blogger. It started with getting my domain and finally I jumped (no, not the shark) onto WordPress. So much better. If we’ve any Blogger folk in the audience, move to WP now :)
So, this is the one-year anniversary of sorts of Trust Tommy starting properly.
Do I get cake?
* Kidding Mom, please drop the saucepan raised in anger.
Disclaimer: Image is not mine. I take no credit. It’s Ken McGuire’s