A Decade Of Blogging

It hard to believe that this tiny little blog in the vast wilderness of the internet has lasted a full decade. January 21, 2007 was the first ever post on Hockey Blog In Canada, and I've vowed to write something daily about hockey since working through that first year. To say that there haven't been times I've thought of walking away would be a lie. It takes some commitment and dedication to post something daily regardless of where I am or what I'm doing. Yes, sometimes I fall behind and have to play catch-up, but the notes for each day are scribbled down here so that I can finish those missed posts.

Let's be honest with one another for a minute. Ten years is a long time to devote to a daily blog with minimal help and less behind-the-scenes assistance than other bigger sites. I'm a month short of 3500 posts in my career on this site, so I've written a ton of stuff about hockey in these last ten years in looking back over the years. It seems nothing was off-limits as long as it had a hockey tie-in. Heck, I even used my vacations to focus on hockey stories specific to those cities and towns!

Along the way, I'm proud to say that I've made a few friends and developed some great relationships. The blog went from being my thoughts to having others drop their thoughts onto the page to becoming a radio show and taking on a life of its own. I'm proud to call Jared Keeso a friend after all he's done and for being a genuinely good guy who loves talking hockey. I had the pleasure of getting to know and working with both John and Neal who have contributed articles to the site, and both men are outstanding individuals. I have met a ton of amazing people I'd consider friends through the blogging community, through social media, and through real-life interactions, and all of these relationships are important to me for the significance in that my life is richer because of these people.

I have made enemies through my work which comes with the territory. A specific hockey league refuses to speak with me and will no longer allow social media interactions, but that's their prerogative. There have been others who have disagreed with my stance or viewpoint on a certain subject, and that's fine. This blog has always been about generating discussion, and we've certainly done that. I have great respect for the commenters who provide insight and reasoning for their stances on subjects, and I love when people contribute even more information to a story with their own experiences and knowledge. Keep it up, folks. You're why I keep coming back.

So where does this blog go from here? It's a question I've been pondering for some time, and I haven't really come up with an answer yet. I like writing as it lets me unwind at the end of the day and I can put my thoughts together coherently rather than just having them bounce around the walls of my skull. That being said, it is an investment of time most days when I seemingly have very little I can spare. At the end of the day, though, I can say that this blog has outlasted the vast majority of other hockey blogs, and I have you, readers, to thank for that each and every day because you make coming back here worth every second.

If there's nothing else I can say, it's simply "thank you" for the nearly two million page views over these ten years. It's "thank you" for the 40,000+ page views per month that I'm humbled by when I check out my numbers. I'm not backed by a major site like Yahoo or SBNation or Kukla's Korner, so I am extremely appreciative to those of you who stop by when you can. I never expected or anticipated to still be doing this through a couple of job changes, a few moves, some personal strife, and other assorted challenges, but the one constant I knew I could always go back to was blogging because it was my outlet to the world.

Thanks, folks, for reading, and thank you for being my inspiration to write. Here's to the next ten years of Hockey Blog In Canada and all the craziness that surrounds it.

Until next time, thanks a million.