Twenty seven years ago, I sat alone at my desk. I’d built a small personal website, and I’d written the first entry of what would become a lifelong habit: My first online journal post.
It was 27 years ago today. It’s my birthday today.
My first post wasn’t meant to be a project, a brand, or a legacy. It was just something that felt good. Quiet, simple, mine.
I remember the feeling more than the moment. It was after midnight, and I was tired from working on the website for the previous 3 hours. There was the glow of the monitor, and a sense that I was opening a door into something I couldn’t yet name. I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t trying to become anything. I was just curious about my own life and what might happen if I actually paid attention to it.
Since then, the world has shifted so many times that it’s hard to recognise the young man who started all this. But I can trace the path of my life through my writing, which was always the point. Every move, every relationship, every failure that knocked the breath out of me, every reinvention, every quiet return to myself after drifting too far – it’s all there.
When I look through the old posts now, the years feel like layers of sediment settling on the riverbed, each one shaped by whatever was flowing through my life at the time.
There was the early excitement and optimism of my New Zealand years. Then the philosophical phase, when I thought I might become some kind of teacher. And somewhere in the middle of that, someone whose presence stayed with me long after we went our separate ways. The years of wandering through work, travel, technology and self-development. The return to Canberra. The bankruptcy. The confusion that followed as I tried to work out how to rebuild myself. The long silences when life was too loud to write about. Falling in love, becoming a father, finding stability again. And then more quiet stretches, each with its own reason.
What stands out most is not the drama, but the way writing followed me through all of it. Sometimes as an outlet, sometimes as a mirror, sometimes as a way to understand what I wasn’t ready to say out loud. Most of the time I didn’t even know why I was writing. Only in hindsight do I see that it was my therapy. A thread running through my life even when everything else felt fragmented.
And now I’m here, nearly three decades later, reading the old posts with a different kind of appreciation. I can see the younger man trying to make sense of himself, and all the versions of me that had to exist along the way to become this one. I can see how much was happening beneath the surface, even when I didn’t yet have the language for it. And the more I read, the more familiar he becomes.
What surprises me most about that is how familiar he actually feels.
He had the same curiosity I have today.
He had the same need to write things down then, so I can see them clearly now.
He had the same instinct to turn a moment into a story, so we could both learn something from it.
A lot has happened between then and now. Marriage, fatherhood, careers, failures, reinventions, some hard lessons, and some beautiful ones. But the part of me that sat at that computer in 1998 hasn’t gone anywhere. He just grew up, took on more responsibility, carried more weight, and kept walking.
This year in particular has felt like a reunion with him. As if the circle finally closed. I uploaded my life into AI, and that changed how clearly I could articulate the thoughts I’ve carried for years. After a long break, I’ve been writing more (commentary on X (previously Twitter) and professional articles on LinkedIn), thinking more, creating more, and rediscovering the clarity that used to come so naturally. Except now it’s filtered through everything I’ve lived over these past 27 years.
So this birthday feels like a quiet milestone. Not an achievement, just a moment to notice the span of time that’s passed since that first post.
Twenty seven years of watching my own life unfold.
Twenty seven years of learning who I am, who I’m not, and who I’m becoming.
Twenty seven years of sitting down, again and again, to turn experiences into words.
I’m grateful I started when I did.
I’m grateful I kept going, even through the long silences.
And I’m grateful to be here now, writing with a steadier voice.
Where I go from here is something I’ll keep discovering as I walk it. But I know this much: the writing will be part of it. It always has been.
And maybe that’s all I ever needed to understand about any of this.
Thanks for reading! Please add your own thoughts below.
Don't forget to subscribe for new posts sent to you by email!