Back to the future: part 1

I started this blog in January 2011, so this month is its tenth anniversary. Happy Blogiversary to me!

It’s changed a lot since then and I’ve had periods when I’ve blogged a lot and others where I have blogged very little. As a tenth anniversary thing, I thought it would be fun to go back over the last ten years of blogging to remind myself how it all came together and how much it (and I) have changed since then.

I made my very first post on 5 January 2011 about a photo I took on 1 January. (I needed to double post for a few days to catch up.)

My first post, 5 January 2011

There was no introduction to the blog, no explanation of what it was about. I just got straight into it. Back then, the blog was called PastPresentFuture, and an entry from my journal dated 4 January 2011 provides some insight about what that all meant.

I’ve been wondering the last few days about the meaning of the Three of Wands, which is the card that came out when I did my iPhone single card Tarot reading. (Yes, really, I have an app for my phone that gives you a single card reading.)

The question I was pondering was what should my direction for 2011 be. It’s an appropriate card, because it’s all about new ventures and such.

[Here followed a lengthy analysis of the Three of Wands card, which included insights such as:]

• This is a card of vision and foresight—looking for greater possibilities. This card asks you to be a visionary—to dream beyond current limitations. The three of wands tells you that now is the time to accept your vision and be confident that you will achieve it. You are being encouraged to move fearlessly into new areas.
• Threes represent the idea of creation, gifts, challenges, opportunities and imagination. New directions and growths can take place. There is divine creation and spirituality and a regeneration of creativity.
• This card represents the undertaking of a creative project or goal. It also signifies the change and the challenges represented by this new beginning.
• Patience. Purpose. Energy to move in new directions.
• The querent may . . . be someone skilled at seeing the connections in life, or someone who seeks to develop and understand connections; where she is, where she has been, and where she is going.
• A successful beginning of a project or inspiration and fire of the artist or the inventor. The basis of the work is firmly established and the undertaking can be fearlessly continued.

Before I started the blog, I’d decided to embark on a 365-day photo project, which was to take a photo every day in 2011, and I was going to do that using an app on my phone (probably called Project 365, I can’t remember). But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted an outlet to share this work as well rather than just keeping it on my phone. The tricky part was working out what that would look like. In the end, a few things all fell into place all about the same time. I’d been chatting to people on Twitter about blogging, one of my scrapbooking friends was also thinking about starting a blog and that morning while I was in the kitchen it just came to me that a blog was going to be my new project.

Screen shot of the first couple of weeks of Project 365 in 2011.

Pastpresentfuture occurred to me as a name because the very first interpretation of the Three of Wands I had seen talked about the three wands as representing past, present and moving into the future, and that was exactly what was on my mind when I drew the card.

So the connection was made. I imagined that the blog would be something new I could do that will help me remember the past (through posting about my scrapbooking and memory keeping), live in the present (by taking a photo of one moment in time) and design my future (which is the bit that never really took off—I was going to start my own Happiness Project but I never really got there. I think I was already busy enough . . . )

I did this project for the whole of 2011. How I managed to take a photo and write a blog post every day for an entire year, when I was juggling working, still being at home with a four-year-old Kramstable and getting him through the first year of Kinder, I will never know. Because I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do it now!

Anyway, I did it.

Some days I didn’t post much more than a photo and a couple of lines, and others were much longer posts where perhaps the photo wasn’t the feature.

Part-way through the year, I discovered some photo editing apps for the iPhone and my photography changed dramatically (see this post for an explanation).

I am more than a little embarrassed by these photos now but am trying to accept them as part of my journey of discovering what I like and what I don’t in my photography. I thought they were super cool at the time! Thankfully, this phase was short-lived.

After 2011 was over, I think I was exhausted and I fell out of blogging very easily, going for weeks or even months without posting. I had a bit to say, but it never translated into posts. I remember having a vague idea of making the blog about my scrapbooking and memory keeping processes, but I think that fell over because I wanted to be doing that work rather than blogging about it.

To be continued . . .