Today marks ten years since I posted the first article on my blog on July 18, 2009: Why Follow Me, And Die!

That was a terse few sentences that only gave the barest of details of the origins of Follow Me, And Die! {You can get the long version here.] It was followed by lots of posts with stories from back in the day and my own ideas about generating ideas and preparing to run games. I later touched on some of the sessions of play when I finally introduced my sons to AD&D.

Since that time I have interacted with a lot of other RPG bloggers and gamers online. Eventually, G+ became the main place to interact and the blog content went down. Occasionally, I would make a blog post out of a comment that was just too long. Many ideas for blog posts were generated from the fertile soil of G+.

G+ faded away with a bit of a return to blogs, and I’m blogging much more regularly, close to once a week.

In 2014, I think it was I posted every day until mid-September when I ran out of things to write about. Over the years I’ve had times I barely looked at the blog.

I started attending cons regularly and met other bloggers and gamers that I knew from online. I attended Gary Con 8 where I met Satine Phoenix, who created my current social media avatar which debuted January 19, 2017. Satine was kind enough to fix my blog header to look better with her art. I have an image on a black background and another on a white background that rotate. [You can get a black shirt with that image here.] A couple months later, I added another blog header in rotation by Del Teigeler. I also use that as the header for my Twitter account.

I started a YouTube channel and am not posting as frequently as I’d like, but I just reached 400 subscribers the other day.

Over on Twitter I passed 1,000 followers.

Last month I wrote this post about the first anniversary of my podcast.

Last August, I started publishing PDFs over on DriveThruRPG and in September I launched my Patreon. Before July is over, I will publish my 12th monthly PDF.

I also am working on a Kickstarter for a card game of all things. If you’d like to get an email when it launches, you can sign up here.

I’ve been gaming for 42 years and on August 24th I get to run a game and play in other games at Gary Gygax’s old house where D&D was written for an Extra Life fundraiser. It is hosted by John Gilbert, with Bill Allan, Fenway Jones, Jason O’Brien, Alex Gygax, Grant Ellis, GM Travis, and me. I am so excited for this opportunity for my first streaming game as player and GM! I hope that we raise a lot in addition to having a great time.

Ten years is a blink of an eye. I’ll be in my mid-fifties in a couple months, and ten years is nothing. I hope to keep playing for decades to come, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the world and gaming changes as I watch my grandchildren grow.

I want to thank everyone who has been part of this wild ride and I look forward to more chats, conversations, and games.

You can listen to the companion podcast here.