Holy crap, y’all. The tiny little blog I started on a whim one cold February morning because I found out the domain thecraftynerd.com was available is officially ten years old.
I was thinking about it this morning too – I knew that the blog’s birthday was soon, but as always, I spaced out on the exact date until I checked my Facebook memories and saw all the previous “Happy birthday to the blog!” posts from prior years.
It’s actually hitting me pretty hard, realizing it’s the blog’s tenth birthday. Like, I was sitting at my computer on my lunch break on one of the rare days where I’m actually in the office, fighting back tears because of how emotional I felt over keeping this blog going for ten whole years. Sure, I haven’t been doing a great job of that over the past few years (thank you pandemic for throwing my entire life off the rails), but I try to post when I can. There have been many times over the past few years when I came close to just giving up and closing down the blog, but I didn’t – I stuck with it. And now here I am at the blog’s tenth birthday.
The Crafty Nerd has witnessed a lot during its ten years – including 261 blog posts, eight Gen Cons, 20 Kishar games (give or take), countless craft projects, two divorces, a pandemic, a whole lot of loss-related grief, at least 10 posting hiatuses, and a complete overhaul of the blog’s branding and logo.
What this year holds for the blog
Last year, I ended up doing a “new year’s resolution” sort of thing on the blog’s birthday – and while I didn’t really follow through on posting more or playing more games, at least I finished a bunch of craft projects – which is something!
This year, I’m going to give myself some blogging goals that I’m gonna try my hardest to meet.
- Write more. About anything. Even if it’s only tangentially crafting or nerdiness related, if I feel vaguely inspired to write, I’m going to write. I need to get back into the habit of adding content to the blog regularly again. I thought about revisiting some old posts, like the one about the ugly blanket I made a while back and the one I wrote about Magic: Puzzle Quest, and doing a follow-up of sorts on those posts – maybe that’s a good place to start. If I can get at least one post out a month for this year, that’d be amazing.
- Go to more events this year. Whether it’s just making sure I get out to all the Kishar games this season or re-entering the world of attending conventions, I need to get out and do nerdy things again. Going to the Kate Mulgrew event last October was amazing, and reminded me of how much I missed being out and about and going to conventions. So, I’m going to try to do that more this year.
- Make more of a dent in the Corner of Shame pile. I managed to finish quite a few things in the Corner of Shame before getting distracted by new cross-stitch projects, and I want to go back to that pile later on this year and see what else I can get finished. Maybe someday I’ll manage to completely eradicate the Corner of Shame pile!
I’m not going to be too hard on myself if I don’t meet these goals, and try to celebrate any sort of wins that happen in the process. Even a little bit of progress is better than none at all, right?
So, here’s to ten years of craftiness and nerdiness – and hopefully many, many more.