James Proclaims!

Ten years ago today I wrote my first proclamation on this blog.

Well, I sort of did anyway.

I certainly published the first post on May 10th 2015, but the missive that I submitted to the blogosphere that day was actually a rehash of an entry I had written for a previous attempt that I had made at achieving the status of ‘blogger’. And the post itself laments the fact that I was, even prior to that failed attempt at an online journal, something of an aficionado at failing to maintain blogs.

It is, perhaps, to be celebrated then, that a decade on from launching this attempt at being a blogger, I still have a blog to call my own. In my head, at least, I continue to regard James Proclaims as a going concern, even if I am something of an absent landlord for the most part.

I may often go months between posts, but I still think of myself as a person who blogs. I haven’t given up, I just often have other things that get in the way. I still do intend to write things to publish on these pages but, alas, I rarely get around to actually doing it. Since becoming a dad for the second time, I really have struggled to find the time and, perhaps more importantly, the energy to be particularly proactive in my proclamations. Nonetheless, the fact that I remembered that today marks my ten-year blogiversary is perhaps evidence of the fact that, on some level, this all still matters to me.

A lot has changed in the last ten years. Politically, economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally, the world seems like a very different place to the one I lived in in 2015. Perhaps I’m not especially qualified to comment on much of that. Although I have achieved four of the five post-graduate qualifications that I hold in that time, so perhaps I am quite qualified. I don’t wish to brag. And nor should I. All of those qualifications make me quite able to fulfil the role that I am paid to do, but they are not evidence of any insight or expertise into the world outside of my profession. So I really shouldn’t brag.

But, actually, I do wish to brag. The 2015 version of me had very little to brag about in comparison. Although he was younger, and if he was here right now, I expect he’d be feeling pretty smug about that. Ironically, as I recall, he mainly started this blog because he was feeling, at the age of 36, that life was passing him by and he should probably do something proactive to improve things. And to be fair to the man, he not only started this blog, but he went on to achieve four new post-grad qualifications. The last of these was completed when he was 43. A time this blog was still thriving. So he’d probably look at me, the 46 year-old version of himself, with some disappointment and perhaps he’d say (accusingly), “what exactly have you achieved recently old man?”

I’d try, in vain, to convince this young whippersnapper, that 36 is no age to feel that life is passing you by, and, actually 46 isn’t all that old either. And I am pretty busy these days being the father to his children, which doesn’t leave much time for completing post-graduate qualifications and writing blogs. Or doing the kind of long-distance running that was the hallmark of our 26-year-old self. 26 year-old-me would no doubt look down on both 36-year-old-me and 46-year-old-me with disdain in some respects, but that guy hadn’t even managed to complete his undergrad degree, having spent much of the preceding years living a cycle of underachievement and unfulfilled potential. He certainly had nothing that even resembled a blog to his name, and frankly he had very little in the way of excuses there. Because blogging was definitely a thing twenty-years ago. Indeed 26-year-old-me should probably keep his opinions to himself because he hadn’t even managed to ask out that girl that he liked. The one that we (36 year old me and 46 year old me) ended up marrying. For she was none-other than the then-future Mrs Proclaims. And soon-to-be Dr. Proclaims, in the event that she completes the PhD that is soon to be celebrating its own ten-year anniversary (I exaggerate – it’s actually only been 8 years, although that is still quite a long time. But if the arrival of two children can limit blogging time, then their impact on doctoral studies should not be underestimated).

Anyway, I’d say to both of these versions of me, and the slightly neurotic 16-year old version of me, who was busy trying not to fail his GCSEs in May 1995 (which in fairness he didn’t, a fact that has been quite helpful to all those subsequent versions of me) that if things haven’t turned out exactly as any of us expected, then they really haven’t turned out too badly.

In spite of increasingly alarming global developments and the more mundane (but still very real) domestic crises that beset this version of me, such as dripping taps, broken floorboards and a rotary washing line that has failed to live up to the hype, life in 2025 is still not too shabby.

Yes, I could be fitter, happier and more productive. And sitting at my OK Computer and writing would help achieve two of those things. But at 46 I can still channel one of the best versions of myself. The irrepressible dreamer that was my six-year-old self still lives on inside. And in my own equally irrepressible six-year-old daughter and her bombastic three-year-old sister , I have a daily reminder to let him out every now and again.

Although probably not on this blog. He was a nice kid, but he could barely string a sentence together.

Hopefully my 46-year-old self will get back to regular online proclamations sooner rather than later. And my 56-year old self will be celebrating the twenty-year blogiversary of James Proclaims, by looking back on a blog that still exists and is still churning out the kind whimsy and nonsense that literally tens of people the world over find vaguely amusing.

Although that guy will be living with a sixteen-year-old and a thirteen-year-old, so we should probably cut him some slack.