33

I’m not real big on birthdays. And as I continue to move north of 30, I suspect this will increasingly be the case. But I do view them as a good, natural way to mark the passage of time.

For example, turning 33 reminds me where I was 10 years ago when I was turning 23. I had graduated from college about 6 months earlier and had just packed up my life in Ohio and driven out to California — a place, 2,500 miles away, where I wouldn’t know a soul.

I was living in a studio apartment just below the Hollywood Hills trying to figure out how the hell one breaks into the film industry while getting coffee and trying not to mess up very specific burrito orders. It was frustrating, terrifying, but also exhilarating. For the first time, I was truly on my own trying to make it as an adult.

And I still remember it like it was yesterday. I still remember this song, for example, which was released right before my birthday. It honestly feels like barely 10 days have passed, let alone 10 years. But then I think about all that has happened in the past 10 years and that feels like I’ve lived a lifetime in that span. I’ve lived in 4 different cities since then. I’ve had 4 different careers since then.

Coincidentally, it was also almost exactly 10 years ago that I started blogging (November 30, 2004, for those keeping score). I had heard and read all about blogging in college, of course. But it seemed like something that was a little too “out there” for me to try. But living by myself in Los Angeles, not knowing anyone, I decided to give it a shot. In other words, I was bored.

While my life has changed quite a bit in these past 10 years, writing has remained the constant. With that in mind, I keep thinking about ways to keep writing. And ideally, to ramp up my output. I tried this past year around New Years, and it worked — for about a month. Work gets busy. Life gets in the way. Etc.

But I’m going to try again. I can’t promise that I’ll write every day, but I’ll try to write most days. And I’ll try to post at the same time every day (I haven’t decided exactly when that will be yet). I think this regular cadence is key — not just for my writing, but also for those of you reading. It would undoubtedly be nice to know that at say, 10am PT most days, I’ll have something up to read.

As to where I’ll be writing, that’s more complicated. One complaint I hear over and over again is that no one has any idea where I’ll post what I write. And I admit that I’m awful in this regard. Tumblr, Medium, Svbtle, TechCrunch, etc. I always thought I could write anywhere in an age where Twitter is the unifying referrer. But I know it’s not that simple. In fact, ideally I’d like people to come read what I write without me tweeting a link at all — a stretch goal, no doubt, but a goal.

I don’t have an exact answer there yet. But I do know that I’ll continue to link to everything on my Tumblr blog at parislemon.com (despite the deprecation of @parislemon). And yes, I’ll continue to tweet links (until I hit that stretch goal one day…).

As to what I’ll be writing, while I recognize that most people follow me for my thoughts on technology, I’d still love to write about other things. Most of the time it will be tech, but we’ll see.

So most of this is still a work in progress. But I figured that since I failed to hit my more stringent requirements for blogging the last time, I’d try some looser ones this time and see where I can go from here. The key is that I want to write, I truly enjoy it, and it has been the unifying factor of everything I’ve done these past 10 years.

Earlier today, someone let me know that this was my “Jesus year” — that is, the generally accepted age of Jesus Christ when he died was 33. Not being religious at all, I still view that as interesting in that when I think about myself, I still feel like I’m really young. Perhaps not a kid, but I basically feel like I’m still a teenager. And yet, the most well-known human being died at this age. Perhaps it’s time to grow up a little. Or at least, write more.