All Over 2a is three years old!

It's that time of year again - today is All Over 2a's third birthday!

Three years ago, having recently finished my GCSEs and having loads of free time, I decided to start this blog for fun. I wrote up my first post, "Hello World!", with absolutely no real expectation of what I was going to end up writing, and definitely without a realistic expectation that I'd somehow still be going all this time later. 

It's bewildering to me that, 414 posts in (a post every 3 days), I've not stopped writing this blog. What's even weirder is I sometimes still refer back to my earliest posts because occasionally, they're relevant to a post I'm writing. Looking back through the archive makes me realise just how much my interests and approach to life have changed, and it's hard to believe I wrote all those posts back in the day. The blog has certainly changed, I hope for the better, and it will probably continue changing for the foreseeable future; I'm not planning on stopping.

There's even some cake!

It's also worth noting I've not been writing just the blog this past year - I've also been writing some fiction of my own, which will probably never be published. However, I have written two articles for my uni's newspaper, both album reviews which I won't link directly because they're under my real name. That can be a challenge for you to find :D. There's also the small matter of me getting some fiction into two different uni anthologies, which again I won't link for the same reason. All in all, even though I have a chemistry degree that's supposed to keep me busy, I've definitely not stopped writing.

On the topic of the blog, though, one thing I've really liked is how even though what I write has arguably become more refined - you're probably very used to the complex chemistry notes and the quirky town writeups - I'm still publishing a very diverse range of posts. What other blogs include a snide opinion piece about a football club, a review of a terminally-online EDM album, and a piece about some suburb in Surrey, let alone back-to-back-to-back? And the reason why I do that instead of loads of boring posts about toast or washing dishes (or, god forbid, blogging) is because those posts would quickly grow stale for me. I like change and learning new things, and the blog's the perfect place to show off. 

By now, I hope all this means my blog has a very unique image. I'm no longer trying to imitate my influences, instead I'm now writing what I truly want, along with whatever you guys might like. I've even managed to occasionally write about a place before my favourite bloggers have, which makes me unreasonably happy. And sure, my audience might not be as big as I wish it was, but that will come over time.

And yes, I'll be celebrating with a muffin again, as usual. I'm thinking red velvet this year, just to spice things up a little. 

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At this point, I'd like to mention some cool things I've made over the past few weeks. Maybe you'd be interested in checking them out:

• I have a new blog, it's called Soul Eraser. That's where I'm going to be publishing any fiction or poems or whatever from now on. There's one story up there already, I hope you like it.
• I'm also not going to be advertising it over here, so if you want to find out when I write something, I highly recommend subscribing to its RSS feed. 
• I also recently discovered Moments, which is seemingly a microblog platform centred around photos. It feels like a nice place to post some photos, almost like a gallery, so you can check mine out if you're interested.
• Ditto my Flickr, which I barely use because I usually don't publish any photos. However, if you'd like to see some pics from old posts in good quality, you'll find them there.
• I also just remembered I have a Substack...I'm linking it just in case I do anything with it. I probably won't. 
• Oh, and my email, obviously. It's at allovertwoa@gmail.com.

I'd also like to mention some cool blogs I've read over the past year:

• Ava, over on Bearblog, has left some kind and supportive messages to me in the past, and she also happens to be pretty good at blogging. Her blog tends to focus on tech, as well as just more personal stuff. I liked her recent post on beetles, and other stuff.
• Toska is a pretty cool blog; the writer, I'm assuming she's also called Toska, has some pretty cool posts - I especially liked the one she wrote about Azerbaijan a while back. 
• Valentine's Days lurks on my blogroll but I've never actually mentioned it before - her blog is pretty cool, again very personal, and she seems to be a fan of Ninajirachi, too!
• The Spacer - one of my writing society friends has been writing this blog for a while, I'm glad to see they wrote a post recently. Always nice to meet bloggers in real life!
• Another blogger on my blogroll is Woolgathering, who wrote a very cool post about rating sites a while back. You should totally check their stuff out. 

And that's it, I guess. I'll admit, I'm not as involved in the blogosphere as I could be, my blog's a bit of an island and I don't read blogs as much as I should. However, it would feel wrong if I didn't mention some blogs I've enjoyed. Oh and also thanks Diamond Geezer and Forking Mad for the advice! 

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Onto next year, I suppose, with all the random suburbs, reaction mechanisms, and Millwall away days you've likely grown used to reading. I'm sure you enjoy them, though :)