This is a rather new blog domain but I am an old, old, oooooold WordPress user. I created my first wordpress blog back in 2007 and have run several since then. My passion for writing started earlier than that, though. I have written a lot, for as long as I can remember. I wrote fluently before age 6 (although my handwriting is still really horrible). I just got an idea for another blog entry, right here (wait for the one about my bad handwriting and what situations it has gotten me into). But for now, let’s get back to the time travelling.
Coming from writing a blog on a local papers blog platform, I came across WordPress back in 2007. I fell in love with how easy it was to build your own blog site. How much you could do with it (compared to now, it was of course not much) and how you could reach a much wider audience. I have never been very interested in becoming an influencer of some sort, but more just reacting to things around me and sharing my thoughts on current events, domestic and international. Back in the day, I mainly wrote in my native language, Swedish, but occasionally switched over to English just for a few posts here and there. Compared to now, when almost all my writing is done in English. I am very comfortable with both languages and consider myself as much fluent in both.
WordPress anno 2007 was a much simpler tool than today. It still had themes and some plugins that were very useful, even to a blogger like me, who didn’t need too much bling but was just happy to write on a platform that suited me perfectly. I got into the habit of posting at least three longer features per week and also a few shorter ones when my schedule admitted for me to write more. I never did write on a pro level, remember. As WP grew in complexity, so did my blog. I added new themes, subcategories, sub-pages and linked the different parts of my blogging together to one bigger page. I wrote about the leaps in tech that were made, I blogged about food and I even wrote a few tutorials on different subjects. All for my own entertainment. And kept doing so for quite some time. In 2011 my private life turned around in many ways and I gradually moved away from blogging and went back to privately kept journals. In 2012, I decided (stupidly) that I would erase my blog presence from the world and did just that. I deleted my page completely and called it the day. My followers at the time, were less happy about this than I was, to say the least. But I was convinced I did the right thing. And kept it that way for two years.
In 2014 I worked at a local radio station. That year, my life partner co-wrote a song and entered the Irish national final for Eurovision Song Contest and won. The song was going to compete in Copenhagen and I was going with, as a supportive partner do. My radio station was ecstatic, of course. They could never afford to send someone to report from Eurovision in the first place but with me going anyway, they got a correspondent on site and I happily agreed to daily reports from rehearsals and stuff that was going on around the host city. One small problem occurred, though. One needed accreditation to be able to get in to different venues and press centre and such. I researched how I could get a press accreditation and teamed up with a fan blog team to actually also write a few blog entries for them as well, in exchange for one of their press accreditations. Back in the blog world but now a little more pro than earlier. And I wrote for them (some of those entries can be found on this site because they are still around on the web) and also reported back to my radio station.
I got back some of my bloggers itch and started up another WP. The explosion of different add-ons that met me, was astounding. I saw potential here, and started advocating WP to my blogging friends and helped a few to migrate their blogs from other platforms. This took up what little free time I had and I didn’t get to blog so much but it was all good because it was fun to help out forming other peoples pages. So I did that for about a year and by then I had gone back to my private journals again. But I kept my WP up just to be able to follow it and have fun testing out new features on the platform. In 2017 I was content with helping others get started on WP and did little on my own page.
At the end of 2021 (mid-pandemic), I started to feel my writing itch again so I started up a blogger account and did some blogging there. Didn’t find my rhythm at all so I closed it again and started Roineland (where you are reading this) where I aim to reclaim former glory of what makes me… well me.
Happy reading. This place will expand and be my very own vent in the world. You’ll find big and small pieces of work. Maybe a tutorial or two, me advocating for what I believe in and also a healthy dose of humour.
The Roine Playground 
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