[Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.]
Ten years ago today, sat in Bogotá’s popular Cranky Croc hostel and based on advice from an Indian friend I knew from my Belfast days, I started a Google-hosted blog.
Google blogger, my acquaintance told me — he knew much more about these things than me, although that wasn’t hard at the time — was blogging for dummies compared to the likes of WordPress (via this El Tiempo blog, I’ve subsequently become au fait with various aspects of the latter).
Putting the world right, the Wrong Way
With the prospect of staying in Colombia for a time on the cards — I certainly didn’t think that over a decade later I’d still be here — I wanted my own space to share my thoughts and views.
You see, whilst working as a broadcaster for Ladbrokes bookmakers in Belfast from 2009 to 2011, I became a serial letter writer to the Irish daily and Sunday newspapers. I touched on various topics, things I couldn’t really get off my chest in the day job (although I did try, at times, to mention them in between greyhound races from such exotic locations as Monmore and Romford).
Rants to colleagues, housemates and down at the local pub weren’t enough. I was a curmudgeon in my mid-20s you could say. And I felt that as much of the world as possible needed to know my thoughts.
‘Who knows how rich I’d be today had Google AdSense not suspended its services on this page for six years due to unspecified «irregular activity».’
Once the first few letters were published, this gave me the belief that at least some editors found what I had to say interesting. Or controversial. It became something of an addiction — I just wanted more, more, more.
However, moving continents and consequently not being as tuned in to events back home meant it became less likely that my musings would appear in Irish newspapers with the same regularity as before.
In any case, I couldn’t be leaving it up to the whim of an editor to get my, um, profound perspective on the world «out there» (the way things are in these crazy, heavily censored pandemic days, that point has taken on extra pertinence now).
Hence the creation of the blog. The medium was kind of all the rage back then, although I may have been a little late to the game. Other, more visual media were beginning to take over.
Be that as it may, Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog has survived, for better or for worse. At its birth, I flirted with the idea of giving it a more Colombian specific name but I figured I may not be in the country too long, so I didn’t want it associated with one particular place over another.
Call it a lack of ambition or a failure to think big, but I always saw it as a means to an end, not an end in itself. That aside, who knows how rich I would have been today had Google AdSense not suspended its services on the page for six years due to unspecified ‘irregular activity’. I could have made at least 100 euros by now. Rich beyond the dreams of avarice, eh?
Nonetheless, and fittingly enough, it all started with The wages of love something of a motif over these last ten years, writing about affairs of the heart. A mixture of bad romances and financial woes, in a way. Three hundred and eighty-three posts later, it could be said, plus ça change.
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Listen to Wrong Way’s Colombia Cast podcast here.
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