4 years

It’s almost 4 years ago that I published my first post on this blog.

The facts:

• Fellow blogger Mzeecedric inspired told me in 2005 to start my own blog. Thx, bro!
• The initial motivation arose out of frustration – a very popular German social network had rejected a few of my texts for publication so I’d told myself: “F… them. I’ll come up with my own site.”
• SEO kitu gani? I am still using the same WordPress template when I switched from using (the standard WordPress) Kubrick template. Am btw still searching for a suitable & modern alternative but people keep on telling me they like the Kikoi banner. And I couldn’t even take another shot of the said Kikoi as I’ve meanwhile used it on another project. Recommendations for an alternative WordPress template with lots of whitespace are highly appreciated!
• Renamed this blog only once – from “Kikuyumoja’s Realm” to just “Kikuyumoja”. From https://kikuyumoja.com to https://kikuyumoja.com.
• 916 posts, 46 categories, 363 tags, 3.107 comments. Still need to improve that tags thingy for older posts. Categories? Blogroll? That’s so 2005. But I still use them.
• 4 years of using WordPress – an experience that has landed me at least two decent jobs related to the creation of blogs as well as some other unpaid WordPress blogs. Those new to WordPress and the taxonomy still prefer categories over tag clouds btw.
• I am still blogging despite the invention of microblogging services such as Twitter.
• I still haven’t lost my blogging mojo.
• I’ve always tried to keep it personal instead of blogging on one specific subject range, e.g. fellow blogger Erik blogging mostly on Africa & technology (and rugby), Sokari on gender violence, racism, sexuality, HIV/AIDS and cancer, Daudi on sports and politics, and so on. It’s a balancing act for me not to blog everything that crosses my mind, but at the same time I am not too selective and try to keep a healthy mixture. I don’t know if I am that succesful with such an approach, but the truth is: I wouldn’t know how to classify this blog other than “private” or “personal”. At least, that’s how I’ve tagged my blog (and those like mine) on my Google Reader. How do you classify or categorize this blog on your linklist (if at all)?
  Also, I wouldn’t want to limit myself to one specific range of subjects. I know that it’s better to be a “theme blog” by covering only a few things (e.g. “this is a chocoloate blog where I only write about chocolate products”), but I chose not to be that. I do participate on other, theme-related blogs where I contribute to water, sanitation, health, environment, climate, technology, etc. subjects so this need for a categorized view of the world (Weinberger’s second order of order, I presume) is already covered by those sites.
• Other than the commentators, I don’t know much about the many lurkers out here. Who are you? And why are you reading my blog? Please comment! Thank you.
• This blog has been part of the Kenyan Blogosphere almost right from the start. And this although I am based in Germany (ok, been working and blogging from Kena in between) and will always remain being a German to an extent where I will require a work permit for jobs in Kenya. My Kenyan side probably is that I know more about Kenyan politics & history than the average Blueband Generation kid out there that grew up with [name of US-American sitcom] on KTN and then quickly left the country for the US or the UK for studies only to develope a need to rediscover their cultural heritage aborad because they’re also being asked about that, e.g. during marathons or once Kenya is back in the media with a negative story (hunger, poverty, AIDS, slums, scandals, natural disaster, tribal clashes, etc.) Don’t want to insult anyone here – guess it’s just a matter of interests. It’s like those immigrants in Germany who are much more German than I am (which isn’t that difficult).

Blogging is easy. Go to WordPress.com (or any other blogging platform), choose a username, register a blog and start writing. And publish it.

Do it anonymously, put your name under it -just do as you feel. But make sure your voice is out there.

My mother once asked me “JKE, who’s supposed to read all this stuff??”. – “Well”, I replied, “…I don’t know. But some apparently do.”.

That would be you, dear readers. Without you and your comments, I would probably never have taken it to this level. I owe you big times!

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Four other things I’ve also learned during the last 4 years:

1. A blog post without a photo is like chicken soup without chicken. You feel that something is missing. So here’s the mandatory and totally random picture:

2. The world is changing faster than expected. And we will need much more visionaries out there who are able to think out-of-the-box and and are willing to take a risk. Even if it means that everyone will start laughing about them.
I wouldn’t say I am a visionary, but I’ve followed my own path during the last 4 years and am happily working freelance now on projects I really like. I like my work and what I do. Do you?

3. Things I value the most: time, inspiration, freedom.

4. Everyone likes a good story. Had this colleague at work who kept on sending me links to “potentially interesting news” for our newsletter: “Here, this link is interesting”. – “Yeah, thx…”, I replied, “but where’s the connection and where’s the story to it?”. Silence.

Twitter taught us that news may be limited to 140 characters only. 140 characters that will either be read or ignored.

Now, scientists can sometimes be very complicated. Blogging really helped me shrinking news to a necessary length – and I am still only at the beginning. I wish that colleague would twitter.

Epilogue
SEO is a horrible buzzword, suitable for bullshit bingo. Thinking about this blog post, I keep on adding new stuff to the list of facts. 4 years are an interesting timeframe to draw a line and look back. Alas, this aim to categorize the blog with something else other than “personal” still remains the hardest part for me.

Author: jke

Hi, I am an engineer who freelances in water & sanitation-related IT projects at Saniblog.org. You'll also find me on Twitter @jke and Instagram. View all posts by jke