Back to the Future

(I somehow posted this on the wrong blog yesterday. Guess I lost my blogging touch the past few years... Here it goes again.)

Back in the day, when I was a student of journalism, I used to run a daily blog. As ‘studying’ wasn’t very high on my list of priorities, that website was my main point of focus. I just threw it all on there: the music I listened to, the movies I watched, how I enjoyed playing basketball - and yes: even the amount of beers I had the other day. Most of the time these rants were accompanied by the necessary photo material.

The number of visitors to the original blog, which carried the same name you see on top of this page, grew steadily over the three years I kept it. That number wasn’t all that bad, considering I wrote in ‘freaky-deaky Dutch’ (quoting Dr. Evil in ‘Goldmember’ here) and blogs weren’t that popular in Flanders back then. My friends checked in regularly, enjoying a good read about the night before, in which they often had participated.

Things got a bit out of hand though: after the summer of ‘05 - in which I had a blast at the beach of Harendijke (near Blankenberge, a town on the Belgian east coast) having spent my summer there as a lifeguard - I kind of spilled the beans on the good times me and my friends Tommy, Benjamin, Pieter and others (we now call ourselves the BBC - ‘Belgian Beach Club’ :-) had had out there.

Which turned out to be just a wee bit too good of a time for the people running the lifeguard service. Back in ‘06, WikiLeaks probably wasn’t even on line yet, but some photos (and especially videos) were leaked to the ones in charge - who subsequently banned us from ever being beach lifeguards again. All because of my urge to share my adventures with the internet crowd.

Things turned out fine though: the next summer I got a job as an intern at a premier Flemish entertainment magazine called Focus Knack. The subsequent summer, after apologizing to the same people who had put my name on the ‘Black List of Lifeguards’, I was allowed to wear the lifeguard uniform once more. Even though I’m crawling towards 30, I’m STILL a damn beach lifeguard - I just can’t help myself.

But all this is beside the point I’m trying to make with this post which, I guess, is: I’m going to try and bring it back to those early blogging days. I’d like to recapture that joy of posting stuff and getting a reaction or two. And if it helps me sharpen my pen, hey, you won’t hear me complain.

So consider me re-connected with the blogosphere (which is now deemed irrelevant thanks to the ‘tweeping’ community, though I could care less as Twitter is not really my cup of tea) and do check back for future posts.

DM