In The Days Of The Giants

Last night I met up with a friend who I have known for about fourteen years. I had been reading his thoughts, conversing on email, and even had a Skype session here and there. Yet we had never met in person. As I saw him turn the corner of the hotel lobby, I recognized him immediately. We are both bloggers. He started writing about medicine in 2004 and I at the end of 2005. Those were the days of the giants. You could count the number of medical bloggers on two hands. And there were some great ones. The community was small and tight nit.

The years would change it all. The number of content producers bloomed over the next decade and then eventually leveled off and began to fade. It seemed like there were a dozen new medical blogs being birthed every week. The names are hazy now. So many came and went over less than six months.

But some stuck it out.

Parallels

I now have become part of the personal finance blogosphere. Although the days of the giants are long passed (and we all can rattle off who those giants are), I can’t help but feel the parallels. I think I have stumbled onto this little corner of the internet just as it is hitting the logarithmic stage.

The new avatars and acronyms are cropping up at a dizzying speed. Even the physician personal finance blogosphere is expanding rapidly. Doc Linus has compiled a list of over sixty and counting. This is up from roughly ten a few years ago.

And I wonder if the financial independence and retire early phenomenon will follow in the same direction as the physician blogosphere. There are still plenty of physician bloggers, but it no longer feels like the vibrant community it once was.

There is even the Playing With FIRE documentary that will be coming to theaters soon, but back in the day we had our medical documentary too.

Sometimes I wonder if history is repeating itself.

Still Here

Yet as I sit across from my friend, I realize that we are still here. The days of the giants have long passed, yet he is changing the world over on his blog. And I am writing day in and day out on mine. His readership is higher than ever, and he has bridged out into some new exciting pathways.

I now talk about the philosophy of personal finance and go to get togethers like FinCon and am a guest on podcasts.

Maybe our words have changed a little, but we stand together in a small crew of people who never left. We came and we stayed. Long after the glory and fame have soaked away, these are just words on a computer screen. Words we feel compelled to write.

Onward

I don’t know if the days of the giants have passed for the personal finance/FIRE blogosphere. I do know that roar of the crowd is at an all time high and the heights of creativity and content creation seem endless.

But they are not. The glitz and the glam may fade over the next decade.

The conversation, however, will continue. Because this is deep work. Deep work punctuated by connection and community that doesn’t have to fade even after the spotlight has moved on. Even after the days of the giants have passed.

It sure didn’t for the medical blogosphere.

Two old friends sharing a dinner and past war stories on a blustery Chicago night are a testament to that.