After a Year

I love and hate you all. I love you all for being awesome and putting up with me, and I hate you all for totally stealing my thunder and having your blog anniversaries in the few months before mine! It’s like trying to show up the bride at her own wedding!* You should be ashamed. Yikes at the thought of me being a bride.

I’m going to carry on with all the normal pomp and circumstance and you can pretend you haven’t already wished 32597 people a happy blog anniversary.

So, I started this blog a year ago, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that I had no idea what I was doing. I’m in awe of people who say that they’ve been blogging for seven years. I didn’t know what blogging was seven years ago. I didn’t know what blogging was two years ago. Okay, maybe I’d heard the word “blog,” but I had no idea there was such a thing as a personal blog.

I’d been tempted for a while to do something on the internet–to produce some kind of content instead of just consuming it. I was obsessed with You Tube, but I didn’t have the guts to vlog, so when I discovered personal blogging, I thought that I might have found my calling. In January of 2008, I set up a Blogger account and started writing, but I didn’t know how to get readers and the thought of people reading my writing was somewhat terrifying, so I stopped writing and eventually deleted my posts.

For some reason, I decided at the end of May to give it another shot. It probably had something to do with being out of school and temporarily unemployed. I still didn’t know how to get readers, but I quickly discovered Twenty Something Bloggers and that made all the difference.

Having people read my writing was really scary to me at first. Just the thought of it made me want to run away. I think that’s the way I put it. Now, of course, aside from the occasional paranoia about people I know finding this blog, I don’t think much about throwing all of my thoughts out there.

As I’ve said many times before and has even been quoted back to me on occasion, blogging changes lives. It’s a way for me to express myself, pursue a major interest of mine (writing–duh!), and connect with people. Basically, I think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. If personal blogging is dying out, then I’m going down with the ship.

*It’s really not like that at all. I’ve never been good with metaphor.