By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson
It’s hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since we published our first post on May 9, 2011.
We have to credit Tugster with the idea. He’d asked us for a guest post about a kayaker’s-eye view on maritime traffic and life on the water. We still haven’t written that one (one day soon, Will, we promise!).
But we pondered the idea… And meanwhile, Vlad kept taking photos, and Johna kept writing essays, until the idea of a blog was born.
Blogs are harder than they look, as anyone who writes on a regular basis knows well.
For us, the first challenge was the name: it had to be memorable (and available), have something to do with kayaking, but be extensible to broader topics. Wind Against Current turned out to meet all the requirements—but it took us quite a while to come up with.
It was slow going at first…
Then there was the question of the “theme”—the look-and-feel of the blog. Johna’s solution? Find a blog she liked and copy the theme. Not so fast, said Vlad: An effective theme would need to handle photographs as well as text—and all the blogs Johna liked 
were text-heavy, with few tools for posting photos (go figure).
It took many days of testing and experimentation, mostly on Vlad’s part, before we selected our theme (“Coraline”—which actually turns out to be not all that good for posting photos…).
And then there was selecting the categories. And composing the basic content (“About” and “The authors” and all that jazz). And that was before we even got to the first real post!
One thing that wasn’t challenging, surprisingly, was the art of collaboration. It turns out that we’re very comfortable working together: Vlad is happy to hand over a selection of photographs and say, “please write something around this”. Or Johna will write a draft, and request illustrations.
Even when we’re co-writing (which you can tell from the joint byline), things usually work well. Fortunately, we share an obsession with syntactic and semantic detail (we’ll debate the proper use of a comma versus an m-dash, or the exact emotional tone of one word versus another). And we’re both comfortable with being edited (not all that common among writers, actually!).
That said, keeping up with the content is a daily challenge. We have more ideas than we have time, as you’d know if you could see our “drafts” folder. And one of us (guess which?) is a lot better at posting the regular content that keeps a blog lively and interesting.
But now we are well launched…
But the biggest, and best, surprise of blogging turns out to be the wonderful, welcoming world of the blogosphere—both our fellow bloggers and those who simply comment.
Who knew there were so many talented, insightful, and fascinating people out there? Whether we’re writing about kayaking, photography, New York, or life in general… there’s someone who shares our passion and weighs in with comments—and in the process, often turns us on to a new, exciting blog that we can’t resist following.
… in open water…
At first, you start writing a blog because you can. Because you think you have something to share.. and you’re willing to try and demonstrate it.
But over time, you write a blog for the sheer joy of communicating with other people. One of the amazing things about the whole experience is realizing that people actually care about your posts—as much as you care about theirs. (We both spend more time than we care to admit staying current on our favorite blogs—because reading them is like opening up windows onto vistas we’d never seen before.)
Johna will never forget the friend who told her she was so absorbed in a post that she (the friend) missed her stop on the bus. And both of us are amazed at the real-life friendships that have sprung up when fellow bloggers have suggested getting together in person.
… and ready to take Wind Against Current to new adventures!
Vladimir Brezina (RIP) 
Johna Till Johnson
Wind Against Current 
Congratulations! I always love coming by and reading/viewing (I know, I know… my grammer, punctuation and spelling can be … inventive).
I hope you keep on blogging for a long time.
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We will! Thanks for being such a loyal reader / viewer! ;-)
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Oooh, thanks! We hope to, as well. And you’d better! (Keep posting, that is!)
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Interesting post! =)
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Thanks!
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Ditto, thanks! Vlad surprised me by pointing out it’s been a whole year… seems longer (I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a blog) but also not very long at all….. Funny how that happens!
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Congrats and a great job you are both doing, thanks MJ
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Thanks so much MJ! We try. As you know, it’s not not easy!
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I’m glad you are keeping your blog because it’s reminding me about the joys of kayaking and pushing me to find a solution to the kayak / motorbike conundrum I have (I don’t have a car so need a kayak I can transport on a motorbike but my motorbike is also too light to safely tow a trailer).
I also love that you are showing how life in a city doesn’t preclude people from exploring the outdoors. I live in Australia’s 3rd largest city and, while it’s nothing compared to NY, your stories and photos are inspiring me to put more effort into exploring the natural parts of my city.
Keep it up :)
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Andrew–You TOTALLY have to get back into kayaking!! One thought: I don’t know what the situation’s like in Brisbane, but you could consider getting a shipping container with a lock and storing your boat near the water. That’s what we do. The owner of the kayak company (NY Kayak Co) keeps a line of shipping containers for boat storage. So even Vlad’s so-called “folding” boat (the aging Feathercraft) which no longer folds lives in a shipping container.
At any rate, it’s worth asking. If you haven’t discovered it yet, people who own real estate along docks and piers are often surprisingly open to these kinds of arrangements.
Thanks for reading, and commenting! Hope to get to Australia one day…
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Happy first blog year; time flies when you are having fun. That first shot is awesome!
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Thanks, Marcia! Yes, the year has flown by so quickly… time flies like an arrow (and fruit flies like a banana)…
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Vlad, argh, it’s too early in the morning for puns! :-P
Thanks Marcia!
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People living further east always have an advantage ;-)
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Congratulations on your blog birthday! I always enjoy visiting here, you both have such a unique point of view :-)
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Thanks composer!
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Congratulations Johna and Vlad! Love your blog and look forward to reading a whole lot more about your exciting adventures!
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Thanks so much, Madhu! Lots more to come!
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Happy blog birthday, Vlad and Johna. Does it feel like more than a year since you started blogging? My “Eco and the Id” blog will celebrate its first birthday in September, and my “Where’s my backpack?” blog turns one on October first, but it feels like I’ve been blogging for years. :)
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ailsapm–you mean you haven’t? :-)
Seriously, can’t remember a time when you were not…. but we’re glad you’re out there! Keep it up!
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I will if you will! :)
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It’s a deal!
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On this note, I do wonder what the lifespan distribution of WordPress blogs is. (WordPress has all the statistics, no doubt.) It’s probably similar to that of New York restaurants. Their half-life apparently is about 6 months; most close within a year. (We should know—three of our favorite neighborhood restaurants have vanished just in the last month.) But those that survive often go on for twenty, thirty years…
Let’s hope our blogs belong to the second group!
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Congratulations! I enjoy seeing the perspective from your kayak.
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Thanks, Fergiemoto! We’ll keep on providing it!
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