I got this mug through an event on the Ten-Year Pact forum. The giveaway post was basically a desk-photo lottery for a custom Ten-Year Pact mug. I joined in with a casual, why-not attitude and somehow ended up winning. So yes, for one brief moment, I felt like the forum’s chosen one.
Since it was such a nice little surprise right after getting back to work, I specifically asked to keep serial number 2023001 for myself. That alone made the whole thing feel even more memorable.
The Ten-Year Pact forum
The forum itself is an exchange space managed by the official Ten-Year Pact project team. Its purpose is simple: to provide independent bloggers with a friendly and peaceful place to communicate.
That description can sound a little vague if you are hearing about it for the first time, so it makes more sense to start with the project behind it.
What the Ten-Year Pact is about
If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are a blogger, a webmaster, or at least someone who spends time around the internet and has some technical background. These days, social media is everywhere, and far fewer people still keep blogs to record their lives or work. Even so, in the vastness of the internet, there are still people sticking with it.
Running an independent site is interesting in its own way. And once you have been doing it for a while, communication with others becomes part of the experience. That is where a blog-centered project like the Ten-Year Pact becomes worth joining.
Members can usually be reached in three ways:
- through the official member list, organized by the year they joined;
- through member RSS subscriptions, which usually pull in each member’s latest posts;
- through the so-called “wormhole” access point — yes, the name really does sound like something out of science fiction.
In official terms, the Ten-Year Pact is a non-profit, voluntary blog initiative maintained by the project team. Joining is meant to help strengthen writing habits, while also improving how people think, observe, document, and share. The core idea is straightforward: keep your blog online for ten years or longer, and keep it active and updated.
If you want to join, you can visit the official site and submit an application according to the requirements. If you do not meet the conditions yet, then wait a bit. And if you do meet them but the review takes a long time, sometimes the only practical solution is to go ask about it in the group chat. It is a public-interest project after all, so delays happen.
A few unrelated thoughts
Yesterday I checked my weight and saw that I was up to 180. For someone with weak self-discipline like me, that number was enough to make me stare at the scale and think for a long while. I decided the first thing to cut back on should be sugary drinks. Too much sugar makes gaining weight easy.
Alcohol also needs to be controlled from now on, aside from the occasional social situation. It is not like I am addicted to drinking. Life just gets dull sometimes, and in a small social circle, everyone is more or less the same. Still, drinking too much is bad for the liver, so that has to be kept in check.
Cigarettes are probably the hardest thing to manage. I have been smoking for many years, so quitting outright is not realistic for me at the moment. The best I can do for now is reduce how often I smoke.
Another thing on my mind: last year I was extremely careful with protection for eleven months, and then still got infected in the final month. There was nothing to do about it. For ordinary people, your life matters deeply to your family, but not many others. So if you can avoid getting sick, avoid it; if you can delay it, delay it.
I still know a few people who somehow never developed symptoms at all. As for lingering aftereffects, I do have some, more or less — reduced stamina and immunity, a bit of chest tightness, things like that. Because of that, I really feel I need to spend some time recovering properly and taking better care of myself.
Anyway, time is up. I need to clock in and get to work.