ten years in the making

This year is packed full of major anniversaries. Not only did I move to Seattle 20 years ago, but a decade ago I began writing & posting photos on Line of Sight. This week marks my tenth year as a blogger!

I’d published articles on a few personal websites before blogging really took off. Often short writing opinion pieces about events in my life, the 2001 crisis in Argentina pushed me to tackle something a little more serious. I went to Seattle in January 2002 —immediately after Argentina imploded— and could not believe how inaccurately US media portrayed what was happening in my new home. With the help of my partner, I put together a website with mainly political & social news from first-hand experience. Readership began to grow.

No screenshot saved of the “Argentina Experienced” blog, but all that great content has been added to this website. Search for “2002” & go back to the earliest post titled “free market peso, day 2“.

Then Flash animation came along. Trendy & eventually hated by millions, I taught myself Flash to have a little motion on the screen & not to be so restricted by HTML. Previous content merged into what I called Abroad …ramblings from Robert. My little airplane is still flying around the world on the Wayback Machine:

Time passed & readership grew. I heard about Blogger & thought the platform would be perfect for what I was doing. Line of Sight replaced Abroad in August 2004. Marcelo & I struggled to figured out WordPress & CSS together. In those pre-Facebook days, everyone & their grandmother had a blog! Most posts on Line of Sight chronicled my exploration of Buenos Aires (architecture, local politics, tv shows, movies, wine & other random observations) or my work in Spain & Portugal (for Rick Steves). The blog also did a great job of promoting my walking tours of BA. I learned tons from locals & met many wonderful people in person via writing & publishing online.

Then in 2008 I moved to Australia. It seemed right to end Line of Sight since it was also the end of an era for me; I didn’t know if I’d ever return to Buenos Aires. So I said goodbye to my readers after almost 1000 posts, packed my suitcases & let the blog sit online as a source of info. Over the next few months something happened. I don’t know if the webpage was hacked or if the problem stemmed from lack of maintenance, but something broke & I couldn’t fix it. Line of Sight had to be taken offline.

However in 2010, I felt inspired to do something other than document Recoleta Cemetery. Line of Sight began again with a clean slate. Many of those previous posts were more like status updates (à la Facebook or Twitter) & not relevant to the new blog. However, I took all the good stuff, restructured & expanded it, then reposted the info… often as a series. Disparate posts about stencil graffiti, architect Estanislao Pirovano, the CIAE electric company, the barrio of Barracas & public housing in Buenos Aires all moved to one tidy place.

Since the blog’s rebirth, I’ve spent the last four years creating longer essays backed with quite a bit of research, writing travel reports & discussing business plans. The response has been wonderful. But NIC Argentina recently revamped how they handle domains so wrighton.com.ar could not be transferred to me or even renewed. Chau, Line of Sight. No tears; it’s a fantastic opportunity for a new beginning. All content has merged here with my city guides, fitting well with the company profile & also serving as my own personal space online.

As before, I’ll continue to write when I have time & concentrate on longer pieces. With so much “short” content available via social media, I’m hoping blogs will continue to serve as a format for those of us with a little more to say 🙂 Happy blog-iversary to me!