Well I never thought I’d manage a month off the drink when I first left rehab. Well having just passed my 12 years sober this little old website is now celebrating 10 years.
So I’ve given it yet another face lift this time the Mystique wordpress theme from http://digitalnature.eu/
Back in 2001 there were not that many AA/recovery sites around and this website was a little hobby of mine that while oft neglected has kept on going.
Here’s what it looked like when it was running off an old PC running linux in my flat on the end of a flaky ADSL line
The content hasn’t really evolved that much, added and taken little bits away over the years. One surprise was an old 3d AA logo I made in a graphics program called Bryce4 that got used all over the place. AA Birthday Cards in San Francisco, AA convention fliers even cropped up unlicensed in an IPhone app. Never usually mind my stuff being used in AA things and always nice to hear when they’ve been used somewhere. Although it’s also taught me to water mark all my flickr and gallery pics these days.
This site still gets over 1,500 unique visitors each month. My thanks to all the people who’ve stopped by, left comments or emailed. I’m afraid I’ve not always been that good at keeping up with some of the things that I’ve been sent over the years.
Amazes me the sheer size of our AA fellowship and the diversity of the members all over the world. Once even met someone in a meeting who said they’d seen this site before coming to their first meeting.
So who knows if this site will last another 10 years, the internet has changed so much in the past 10 years who knows where it will be by 2021……………. Keeping Anonymity in line with Tradition 11 in the age of Facebook provokes so many challenges.
Lets hope AA can keep pace with the technology changes, AA GB has it’s updated website and excellent AA email responders, lets hope it keeps itself available to new comers through the next “big thing” especially with the internet going more mobile and pervasive in our everyday lives. I sound like a right old git when I tell the kids I didn’t have a mobile phone till I was 24 and the internet used to come over our phone line through a noisy modem and you couldn’t use the phone while you were online with your 56kbps max connection.
Keep safe, keep sober, and if your thinking of doing something about your drinking all I can say is, it was the best thing I could ever have done. It wasn’t always easy in the early days but it’s certainly been worth it. Hey I survived past 25 so that has to be good.
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