13 is my lucky number, so I’m not going to worry about it.[^1] – Taylor SwiftExactly 13 years ago today I published the first Emacs Redux post and kicked off what has become one of the longestrunning projects in my life. Time flies!Some NumbersOver the past 13 years I’ve written 228 articles here. That’s not a lot bysome standards, but I’m pretty happy with the consistency. There hasn’t been asingle year without at least one post – although 2017 came dangerously closewith just 2 articles (written on the 31st of December). Here’s the full breakdown: Year Posts 2013 68 2014 27 2015 9 2016 11 2017 2 2018 6 2019 6 2020 23 2021 20 2022 8 2023 9 2024 5 2025 16 2026 18 2013 was the clear winner – I was on fire after launching the blog, writingalmost 70 posts in a single year. I doubt I’ll ever match that pace again, butyou never know.The Octopress Dark AgesOne thing that almost killed my blogging wasOctopress. When I started Emacs Redux it was the hotblogging platform for programmers, but over time it became a real pain to workwith. At some point just getting the site to build locally felt like achore, and that friction killed my motivation to write. I wrote aboutthe migration back in 2018, andlooking at it now I can’t help but smile at this bit: I realized recently that it has been over 10 years since my first blogpost. […] One thing never really changed, though - the quality of mywriting. It was always abysmally bad…I also noted there that 2018 marked the blog’s 5th birthday, and that I hadfailed to keep up the pace I originally set for myself. Some things don’tchange! But the migration to a plain Jekyll setup withno extra layers on top made a real difference – that’s still what I’m usingtoday, and it gets out of my way completely. The lesson? Keep your publishingtoolchain as simple as possible.The Editor LandscapeLots of things have changed in the editor world over the past 13 years, but mylove for Emacs remains as strong as ever.Last year I had a lot of fun rediscoveringVim and wrote awhole series of “How to Vim” articles onbatsov.com. I’ve also spent some time with Helix, Zed,and even VS Code (mostly for F# development). Playing with all of these onlyreinforced my conviction that Emacs is the One True Editor – or at the veryleast, the right (most fun) editor for me. There’s nothing quite like it!Recent ActivitySome of you might have noticed that Emacs Redux has been more active than usualover the past few months. Two reasons for that: I’ve been having a lot of fun working onneocaml, and new projects alwaysgenerate a steady stream of interesting findings worth sharing. I’ve made it arule of mine to turn those into blog posts instead of letting them fade frommemory. I wanted to celebrate this birthday in style, so I promised myself to push abit harder on the blogging front until today. No promises for the rest of the year, though!Thank YouA big thank you to everyone who has been reading Emacs Redux over the past 13years. And to all the people who have supported my Emacs open-source projects –whether by contributing code, filing issues, writing docs, donations, or justspreading the word – you have my gratitude. None of this would be as rewardingwithout you!Looking Ahead The best way to predict the future is to invent it. – Alan KayWe live in a world that’s changing fast, and the future is always uncertain evenin the best of times. But I hope that Emacs (and Emacs Redux) will be alive,well and relevant for many years to come!In Emacs we trust! Keep hacking![^1] Same here I guess, given I was born on the 13th.