slip-sliding away…..

On 2^nd June 2006, this blog was born. I was 25 years old, in a very solitary existence: living alone (but desperately seeking my soulmate), and struggling to cope with life as a working adult, without career stability (being in my 3^rd consecutive non-permanent job after university).

I was still in the early years of writing – albeit very privately (more about that later) – at a time when Web 2.0 was just taking off (i.e. sites became interactive rather than static, one-way communication). And it was then that I stumbled across blogs, and a new world opened up to me. A world I still find myself in all these years later…

How it started

As a life-long introvert, I’d always struggled with in-person social interactions. So, when the internet came along in the mid-1990s, it opened up doors for me to connect with others online – without the social anxiety that accompanied standing face to face with another person.

Online chatting (remember mIRC?), forums related to my interests, and lengthy emails with people I’d met on the web gave me comfortable ways to make virtual friends or acquaintances (some of whom I went on to meet in person).

And even though I’d write a lot (my emails were sometimes described as ‘essays’), somehow, I still hadn’t realised that writing was the way I expressed myself best.

Early in my school career, my teachers had identified writing as a strength. But, because writing relied on creativity, and creativity couldn’t be taken for granted, 9-year-old me reasoned that writing was not a viable career option. And so, after a while, I didn’t put in extra effort, and for most of my childhood and early adulthood, the only things I wrote were school (and later university) essays and assignments.

The only exception was in the final years of high school, and then the first year of university: in those years, I took to parody writing – coming up with stories and other material about the people at school, which entertained my small circle at the time.

But that was just for fun. I had never attempted any serious, reflective writing. I had never kept a journal, and had no idea how therapeutic writing could be.  

A few years after university, in a particularly lonely period, my tortured inner world finally gave rise to personal writing: reflections, poems, lists, and other cathartic forms of self-service therapy…all of it just flowing out.

I’d never planned to share this with anyone. It was intensely private, and was never meant for eyes other than mine. But when I stumbled across blogs around 2005 / 2006, a new world opened up to me, which would later give a platform to these writings.

I loved delving into the minds and hearts of these bloggers, reading their creative works, commenting, and discussing topics of mutual interest.

The obvious next step was to start my own, which I did in June 2006. I initially wanted to host it on Blogspot (owned by Google), because that’s where most of the bloggers I followed hosted theirs. But the address I wanted wasn’t available, so WordPress was the next best thing. This turned out to be a good choice, given that WordPress flourished and Blogspot still seems stuck in the early 2000s.

I wanted to remain anonymous, so I didn’t use my real name, opting instead for my mIRC chat name at that time – “Dreamlife”, which had nothing to do with aspirations or  the state of my life back then, but was rather literal (as explained here).

The blog title – “Slip-sliding away” – which has remained the same from day 1, was taken from Paul Simon’s melancholy, reflective 1977 song, which was playing in my head when I signed up.

Now, you would think that starting a blog meant I’d have something to write about. But back then, I didn’t have the courage to publish my words. However, I thought myself something of an amateur photographer at the time, so I posted themed collections of pictures I’d taken with my then-cool camera phone (later upgraded to a digital camera). I wasn’t on Facebook back then, and there was no Instagram, so this was really the first platform available to me to share curated sets of images, usually with captions (which I enjoyed coming up with). I continued commenting on other blogs, becoming part of a network of young South African bloggers at the time. And nearly four months later, I took the plunge with my first written post – publishing a childhood story I still had in my possession. A week later, I took a step further in putting up my first actual written post (i.e. from an adult me): a rather clunky, overly-cautious, repetitive rant about the approach that some community leaders took in religious sermons.

Given that this happened close to Ramadaan that year, the next few posts after that focused on spiritual sorts of themes too.

One of the bloggers in our network was a budding writer, and with her encouragement, soon after, I became confident enough to publish my poetry here. The first piece I ever shared was this ode to solitude, inspired by a rooftop that I had just discovered. It became my fortress in the sky – a refuge from the world of busy-ness and pressure in those crucial, vulnerable years, and it remained my hideaway for a very long time thereafter, until I lost access to it a few years ago.

Things snowballed, and I posted more and more written pieces – poems, reflections, personal growth ambitions, and rants – while still keeping up with the visual posts.

I wrote and posted whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, following whatever felt good at the time. No schedules. No writing for an audience (though I had one). No metrics (stats weren’t available in those days, nor did I care for them). In short, it was what a blog was meant to be:

weblog (short form: blog)

noun

a website on which one person or group puts new information regularly, often every day

(Definition from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

It chronicled whatever was on my mind and heart, often non-specifically (to protect my anonymity), as I tried to share experiences and lessons, and invited feedback from readers.

It held the poems I felt were good enough to put in public view.

This blog really just served as an online personal space. And 20 years later, it allows me to remember my past through glimpses of what was, while also seeing how life has changed, and how I have changed.

The numbers

Since data analysis is all the rage these days, I took a trip down memory lane, reviewing what I’ve published here over the years, and looking at the numbers for any interesting patterns.

As of now, this blog holds 812 posts (with another 9 taken down due to content issues). However, that number is deceptive, because over this time, I have recycled and re-used material, such as the 30-part Hajj Chronicles series (published 3 times in total), and promotional re-postings of poems that appeared in books.

Regardless, looking at the full range of posts, I’ve divided the material into four categories:

• Pictures (mostly my own, but sometimes images I’ve found elsewhere)
• Poems
• Reflections (including travelogues)
• Other (content which wouldn’t really fit into a book; including occasional re-posts from other writers)

Aside from the periods where I’ve posted a series, I’ve never really kept to a schedule of when I post. Which is why my volumes per year aren’t consistent:

What’s interesting to me – in terms of types of posts – is how the writer in me pretty much took over this blog from year 2 onwards:

I think for most of that time, I kept taking pictures, and my cameras (i.e. phones) kept improving, but I just didn’t feel the need to post sets as regularly as I once did. And once I got onto Instagram (around 2019), it just became easier to use that platform to share images.

Within the written posts, my favourite categories are the ones that make up the books I’ve published – namely poems and reflections. It seems like I’ve never really found the balance between the two, most often prioritising one over the other, with poems (179 in total) usually lagging behind reflections (263 in total). But, given that my poetry is almost always inspiration-based (which I know is not ideal…we shouldn’t wait for inspiration to arrive), it makes sense that it’s been easier to write prose more often.

Turning to the audience, I can see that my original Hajj Chronicles period (2012-2013) drew a lot of people in. In fact, those Hajj-related posts still attract a fair number of views to this day, even though I haven’t written much about it in recent years (which is understandable since that journey was 15 years ago).

In the years after my Hajj journey, I put a lot of effort into trying to share lessons and advice for those going, and when I look at the stats today, I’m actually blown away. The various Hajj tip sheets I published have been downloaded almost 20,000 times over the years, and the Hajj Chronicles e-book has been downloaded over 1,200 times. I can only thank the Almighty for giving me the experiences He did, and the ability and platform to share these materials afterwards, and I pray that they were of benefit to those who acquired them for their Hajj journeys.

As for where my wonderful readers hail from, 175 countries are represented in total, with my home country coming out top – just edging the United States – and the UK, India, and Saudi Arabia rounding out the top 5.

Now, for a site that’s been around for 20 years, I realise these numbers are probably pretty low compared to other bloggers. But hey, for someone who isn’t a social butterfly and hasn’t made a huge effort to promote his work (I’ve never paid for any social media boosts), I think it’s alright.

Numbers don’t really matter anyway. Impact is what counts. (Though it still is nice to see the numbers aren’t pitifully low.)

But how did it look?

The blog’s look and feel has changed over the years. I I’m not a web designer and know very little about HTML, so I’ve always relied on whichever theme and style options WordPress made available:

Source: Screenshots acquired via WayBack Machine (https://web.archive.org/)

Nowadays, I suspect that most of my readers arrive via the WordPress / Jetpack app, so looks don’t really matter much anyway, since most of you simply see the post content without the overall site aesthetics.

The death of traditional blogging (with some new hope)

This site started in the golden age of blogging, but as technology developed, that era came to an end. Before long, ‘professional bloggers’ – the precursor to modern-day ‘influencers’ – rose, and after that, the explosion of social media effectively steamrolled traditional blogs into the past.

The sheer volume of user-generated material online grew exponentially, and that – combined with the shortening of content (largely driven by Twitter) – solidified the trend of shorter posts.

But for me, the biggest threat to meaningful engagement (i.e. actual, authentic discussion via comments) came with the spread of the Like button to blogs (taken from social media). With the ever-growing flood of content we were exposed to, in faster, increasingly digital-dominated lives, this mechanism became a convenient way for readers / viewers to acknowledge the work of the writer / producer without having to actually think of a response or talk about the material.

Of course, social media platforms then grew much greedier, and their algorithms ruined the ‘social’ experience, to the point where today, for many of us, they feel more like ad platforms rather than places where we can actually connect with the concerns, creative expressions, and discussions of other humans. And that trend has been amplified tremendously by the invasion of AI bots, leading one to wonder if the Dead Internet Theory is unfolding before our very eyes.

Through all this madness, though, traditional blogs have still hung around – though far fewer of them remain active.

However, there is hope. I’ve found that Substack has been a sort of revival of that old-school blogging vibe, because it’s both a blogging / writing platform, but also a discovery tool (via its social-media like “Notes” function). (Technically, it calls sites “newsletters”, but I’ve only seen a few people treat their Substacks like that.)

I’ve been on Substack for almost 3 years now, mostly just duplicating material from this original WordPress site. But it’s good to know that creatives now have a fairly popular place to spread their work. Let’s just hope that it won’t succumb to the sorts of practices which killed so many other platforms that started well, before degenerating.

Why it still matters (to me)

Though it may sound strange, this blog has been and still is a big part of my life. It’s been around for just under half of my lifetime, serving as an outlet to express my inner feelings, thoughts, ideas, and visualisations….whatever is important to me. As a creative outlet, it continues to serve me well, giving me a platform to share parts of me – through my writing – that I don’t think I would give much attention to if there was no one around to read.

I don’t write for public attention, but I think what’s true for me, and most other writers, is that although we can write to our heart’s content privately – and that process serves an important function for our inner selves – when we produce something that we feel is beautiful, or beneficial in some way, we want it to be seen. We want to share it with others.

And, short of publishing a book (which takes a really long time), or putting it on social media (where it’s very quickly swallowed up by the noise of the endless content), a blog gives you a space to easily get your stuff out to others.

You might not get many eyes on it – because information overload is a curse of our times (now that everyone can be a broadcaster). But the point is that you can still get it out there. You can still make it accessible to others, without the gatekeepers of traditional media which limited audience reach for most of human history.

20 years later

It’s now 2nd June 2nd 2026. I’m 45 years old, happily married with two somewhat-grown kids, still struggling to cope with adult life (in different ways to 20 years ago), and heading towards my 15th year in the same, stable job.

This blog has been with me through the entire journey, from 2nd June 2006 until today. And I hope it will remain as such for whatever other adventures and changes life has in store for me. Alhamdullilah – I thank the Almighty for it all…

Thank you to everyone who’s been part of this ride – whether or not you subscribed, joined the discussions, shared the material, bought the books, or just took in the posts.

I appreciate you all, and hope that this little space on the internet has benefitted you in some way. I welcome all feedback (either in the comments or privately), so feel free to reach out anytime.

Thanks again
Yacoob