On Blogging, or a thank you for not making me write only to myself

I have been blogging since I was 16. I have archived blogs back to when I was 21, mostly over on live journal. I’m very glad none of those blogs are linked to my current blog, since I was fairly ridiculous back then.

I started blogging because one of my groups of friends in high school all blogged. We would all go to the same event and then go home and write about it and wait to read how everyone else described the event. I loved that we all had such different ideas or thoughts on the same events.

Then we all moved away for school and blogging was a great way to capture life. This way you didn’t have to write a bunch of email, but we could all be updated.

I continued blogging after that because I loved having a record of life – I loved being able to look back at what I was doing earlier.

In the past year blogging has gone from a place to the daily comings and going to a place to record life and be creative. I get to express my thoughts and opinions. Show crafts and food. I get to share the things I’m passionate about, and document life. I love that.

Part of the reason I blog is because I love to write. My sister and I used to exchange long, ridiculous emails. These made me laugh and laugh. Jenna always said I was the best writer she knew, this coming from someone who hates reading was a bit compliment! So I continue to capture my thoughts. I know I am not someone who could make up stories or write fiction, but I love to document what I know.

When I was in creative writing for plays, I found it hard to make up stories, but I could easily take a rough outline from something that had happened and weave that into a real story. Every play I wrote was based off of something I had experienced or heard – I loved to flesh things out and make them come to life.

I love to figure out how to take the events I’ve been to and let you have a glimpse of what they were like – I don’t think I accomplish that as much as I’d like to but it’s something I’m working on.

I love that blogging allows me to excersize the creative side of myself, without leaving a mess to clean up. No peices of take to pick up off the floor, no stacks of paper to sort or store, no supplies to purchase. Just me and any computer that connects to internet. Though of course, I bought a mac, because really how do you have a hobby without spending too much money? Is it really even a hobby then?

I read this and this today and loved them. They follow many of the “rules” I’ve always wanted to follow in my blogging.

Some of the points have been trickier, like photography. My new iPhone has helped since it’s photo are so much superior to that of my Blackberry and even my camera! My mac book has helped with photo editing, though Photobucket and my friend Laura have been greatly useful as well.

Laura has been awesome – she first challenged me to a month of blogging last year, and then another one shortly afterwards. These two helped kick start me to write every day. Before that it was VERY sporadic. She also helped me learn how to edit some photos a bit. Also, just to show you how ridiculous we are, we email all day long. We both work in offices with no peers, so we email back and forth. So already we talk all day, but then we both blog and we both encourage the other to blog. AND if I haven’t blogged yet, she’ll ask me all day about it until I do. She wanted to make sure that I knew, though, that she pestered me for it because she just loved reading it so much. Now that’s some motivation!

Blogging is funny to me, I kind of thought no one read mine. I average 1 comment every 3-4 blog posts. That’s fairly low in the blog world, or in any world, considering that means most blog posts get no comments. BUT when Laura suggested I started posting them to facebook I started getting comments on FB. So that was great! And it helped up my readership – now often someone will start a conversation with me by saying something like “oh yeah, I was reading on your blog….” Awesome. Now two of my bff’s Stefany and Jodi read my blog every time I post, and are always bringing up things I blogged about. So much fun! Though I know how to be careful when I want to complain about them, *jokes*. So while I still average 1 comment for every 3-4 blog posts, and have 17 follower (up from 12 2 months ago, woot) I have on average 50-100 people a day that read my blog. That shocks me! And then to have friends comment on how much they love to read it, and that they look forward to it, well it warms my heart a lot!

So thanks to anyone who takes some time to come over to my blog and read it – you make me smile. And you make this me not just “talking” to myself. Or writing to myself as it were.