A year of gopher

I wrote the first entry in this phlog[1] one year ago today, during a

rainy New Zealand autumn, at a time when my life was largely dominated

by desperate preparations to move my entire life to Finland in a

matter of weeks. I'm glad I noticed this impending anniversary before

it happened, so I could use it as a chance to reflect.

In the last year I wrote 108 posts, almost exactly two posts per week

on average. I think I'm quite happy with that rate and don't really

have any plans to change it.

I have ended up pretty much writing about whatever it is that I feel

like writing about at any given time. A professed goal, early on, was

to use this phlog to try to sort out a swirling collection of thoughts,

ideas and feelings around socio-technical trends, and while I have

certainly written a lot about that, there has not been much of an

attempt at any kind of summary or overall synthesis. I haven't

realised a small number of clear, consistent core principles

underlying everything I've said. Perhaps I should do a read through

of my old posts some time, taking notes, and see if I can distill

anything.

It feels a little unreal that I've been here (both in gopherspace and,

almost, in Finland) for a year already. For the past maybe 5 years or

so I've been really aware of feeling like my perception of time is

shifting, so that it seems to go faster. This is, I think, a pretty

common experience (very well expressed in Pink Floyd's "Time", which

I'm listening to as I write this), but I have to say, if it feels

this bad in my early 30's I'm kind of terrified of how much worse it

might become as I get "actually old".

It's been a great pleasure to spend the last year in the company of

my fellow gophernauts, even if more and more of them seem to be,

sadly, moving on (pet84rik is the most recent to disappear, and I will

really miss him). Whether the number of phloggers grows or shrinks,

as long as gopherspace maintains its current warm and cozy feel, I'll

be here.

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/introduction.txt