Once Around The Sun

Well, here we are on October 19 again. Why do I mention that? Because it was on Sunday, October 19, 2008 - one year ago today - that I made the first entry here. Amazingly, I have now officially been a blogger for an entire year.

This is entry number 186, which means effectively an average of one entry every other day, although there's been a few long-ish gaps of a week or two between entries in 2009. I seem to be getting back to more frequent postings as the days get colder and shorter though - although I doubt I'll ever manage a full house for the month like I did in December 2008. In one sense, blogging is like songwriting, it's often said that a band has 20 years to write their first album, and only six months to write the second one...

What's kept me going for 12 months is the fact that what I'm writing is being read by people just like you. If you've ever read, commented on or linked to any of my blog entries in the last year, then I just want to say thank you for the interest in my life, such as it is. In the sidebar you may notice my Google Friend Connect gadget under the heading "friends of the alien" - if you want to, feel free to click the "follow" button to show me your appreciation :)

My writing style probably needs a bit of work - I'm no Shakespeare, and I know I overuse dashes, brackets and those famous three dots... in a way I write like I think, but perhaps there's no shame in that. I like to think that what you see is what you get with me - my blog's been described as "honest" by one of my fellow bloggers, and I think that's a pretty fair description. There's certainly been no holds barred about some of those 186 entries!! I am certainly not trying to play a role here - apart from the sensible precautions of referring to people under assumed names (GroupieGirl, etc) this is the real me. (yes, even the "alien" bit!!)

So shall I continue this, as my blog enters it's second year? I hope so - it's been an interesting twelve months (although now is not the time to look back, let's save it till December) and I hope the next year is just as interesting. I've occasionally found myself thinking of ideas for blog entries during downtime at work or on my commute home, and sometimes when things happen I think to myself "there's a blog entry in here, somewhere..."

In order to celebrate, I've compiled a Spotify playlist of sixty of the tracks I've featured at the end of my entries over the past year, handily listed in the order I originally posted them. There's about four hours of music on there, and sadly some tracks I'd have liked to include weren't available, but if you're on Spotify do go and have a listen. I certainly will be :)

Time to raise a glass and work on volume 2 then, eh?

SUGARCUBES - BIRTHDAY
(from the album "Life's Too Good", 1988)