How time flies when you're having....fun?

It was exactly a year ago today that I first dipped my toe into the blogsphere ocean, with my first post on what was then 'Sammy B's Semicentennial'. Now here I am, 273 posts later, but where is here?
I've been reading a few of my early posts over the past 24 hours, trying to compare my situation now with then, and what, if anything, has changed. When I started the blog, I guess I was just about coming to terms with the fact that my long-standing attraction to boys had definitively resurfaced over the previous few months, largely because I'd fallen helplessly for one particular boy, the young man known in the blog as 'DBJ'. I'd been seeing him regularly since 2006, when he was about 9 and a pretty little boy in his primary school uniform, but by the time he was around 13 at the end of last summer, when I left my old job and any realistic prospect of seeing him again, he'd grown to the very cusp of puberty, and into just the most attractive person, from my perspective, that I'd ever seen, certainly anyone I'd seen on a long-term basis. He's gone from my life now, not, realistically, that he was ever really in it in any meaningful way - I never even properly spoke to him, doing little more than gazing at him from my workplace window like some lovesick teenager, and writing about him at some length, here and as the inspiration for at least five fictional/fictionalised pieces in my other blog.
DBJ may have gone, but my attraction to boys certainly hasn't. Where it came from originally, I've no idea, because nothing specific happened in my childhood or youth that I can pin any sort of explanation on, but it has been there, certainly since my very early teens, if not before, and over the last year, probably because I've been more honest with myself about my desires, I've noticed far more attractive boys than I can ever remember in the past. That's not to say that I'm going to rush out and start molesting anyone, because I've also come to realise that whatever else I might be, I'm no rapist - the very thought of hurting someone in that way fills me with horror. That realisation has been crystallised through my association with blogland, in that I've read a number of accounts of those who have been hurt, physically, emotionally or both, by non-consensual sex, and I'm absolutely certain there's no way I want to inflict that kind of pain on anyone, for any reason.
The other big difficulty that the turn of my attention back towards boys has caused is the problems it's caused me in how I relate to my family, and my wife in particular. I don't feel especially guilty about my attraction to boys, most of the time, anyway, because it just is, is part of my makeup, that's to say, but I do often feel guilty and frustrated about having to live a lie for so much of my life. Blogland is perhaps the only place I can really be myself in any organised sense, but whether that's a positive or a negative is difficult to assess - if I didn't have this place where I can express myself, would I have continued to bury and suppress my desires, as I'd largely managed to do for many, many years, or would the pressure have built to the point where it erupted into my doing something damaging, to myself or, far worse, to others? There have been occasions in the past year where I have come close to saying something to my wife that either directly or indirectly could have exposed my 'secret', not helped by other stresses in our lives, finances for both of us, work for me and her parents' health for my wife, and I do sometimes wonder whether she'd be better off without me, and even, occasionally, whether I'd be better off on my own, but we are coming up for twenty years of being together, so I guess that must say something about the foundation our relationship is built on, even if I feel to some extent that my deceit undermines that foundation. One aspect that has been an undoubted positive has been my closeness with my daughter, even after I accidentally 'came out' to her last summer. For someone who's only a matter of days into her teens, her love and support towards me has been so important. I have no doubt that many people would say she's been burdened with an issue that's beyond her life experience to cope with, but she really does seem to have handled it with a maturity way beyond her years.
Another massive change that has come about during the lifetime of my blog is in my job, and the upheaval to my lifestyle that's entailed. I knew I needed to escape from my previous job in some fashion, because it wasn't doing anything for me personally or for my family financially. I'd worked away from home before, between 2002 and 2006, so applying for, and eventually being successfully appointed to a much better paying job in the London area didn't, on the face of it, look like it was going to throw up any insurmountable problems. Now that I've made the move, though, it seems that I've changed more than I thought during the four and a half years that I was in my job here in Cornwall. I really have found it much more difficult to cope with the time I've had to spend away from home than I did the first time round, and even after the best part of 5 months, I'm still not entirely convinced that it's something I can continue to do for any length of time. The problem is that if I can't find a way to cope, and have to give the job up, it will more or less instantly tip us into bankruptcy. No pressure there, then. I really wouldn't want to predict, just at the moment, which way this issue will fall.
What about the blogging experience itself? To say that there have been ups and downs is a considerable understatement. Probably the biggest 'down' so far has been the 'Yacky Box' affair and its aftermath. I mentioned 'Yacky Box' in my very first post as one of the things that had inspired me to start blogging myself, but it eventually proved to be a salutary lesson in the fact that not everything online should be taken at face value. Personally, I didn't suffer anything beyond a little embarrassment at having been duped, but there were others, including people I've come to care about, who suffered far more hurt, and, on top of that, there was an almost palpable sense of trust being lost, a trust which I don't think has come anywhere close to having been restored, even several months after the event. It's a characteristic of online transactions and interactions that people have to take what they're told on trust, whether it's buying something on Ebay, or whether it's befriending someone through Blogger or any other social network who you're never likely to meet in real life, and when that trust is breached, it can be very difficult to come to terms with. That being said, one of the highest 'ups' of my year in Blogland has been the friendship and support I've found here. I've 'met' some people, some in my own country, some in far-flung locations across the world, who have definitely enhanced my life, and if I've been able to give 1% of what I've received over the last year, I'd take that as grounds to be proud of myself. With the rewards of getting to know people in Blogland come responsibilities as well, so I've always tried to be honest and not to deceive anyone, and also to help in any way I'm able to within the confines that cyberspace entails. I'm aware that anyone who reads this, or anything else I've written, only has the evidence of my words to support my assertion of truthfulness, but what you see, or read, is what you get in my case, beyond the pseudonymity I've chosen to use, which, as I've said several times, is for the protection of my family rather than myself.
So, where does my blog go from here? In the short term, at least, nowhere it hasn't been before. Despite the aforementioned ups and downs, and periodic doubts about the wisdom of continuing, I still find more pros than cons in my blogging experience, and as long as that perception continues, I'll be around. Will I still be here for a second 'blogaversary'? Who knows? Certainly not me. What I am certain of, though, is my continuing gratitude to everyone who follows, comments on and reads my blog - I wouldn't necessarily say I wouldn't be here at all without you, but I definitely wouldn't enjoy it as much. Thank you all very much.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B