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