(ED'S NOTE: Portions of this post have appeared previously on The Last Page.)
It began just as practice.
That’s all the blog The Last Page was about in February 2002, and that’s essentially what it's about now, a year later. I wanted to learn HTML quickly, but more importantly, I wanted to start writing again. I had always been an avid journal writer, but as it happens, I type much faster than I can write in longhand now, and sadly, my penmanship has become so poor that I cannot read my own handwriting.
In addition to learning HTML and starting to write again, I was headed out on a very long out-of-town assignment in a cold, windy city that wasn't exactly rockin' around the clock. I needed to find a way to entertain myself. My boyfriend had started a thing called a “blog,” and was learning HTML faster than I was. I couldn't have that happen, so I decided to start one of my own -- to give me some practice. I did not have any idea of what my blog would be, what I would say or what I would write. I just began it in the early morning hours and went from there to here.
I had begun a blog that I honestly didn’t expect anyone to read. Often, regardless of what Bravenet tells me, I still feel no one is reading. All the same, I still blog.
And the more I blog, the more I learn. I could write that I learn more about politics and current events, but that wouldn't be true. I was a journalist long before I became an analyst, and I still work in the journalism industry, so I get more than my share of news and views, 24-7. What I find most fascinating about blogging is what I learn about people's lives, the big stuff and the little stuff. Kevin noted in his post that reading blogs is like reading minds. That is true in some cases. Most of my everyday blog reads are not based on current events, but on the real lives of the bloggers. My own blog is a mish-mash of the mundane insanity that is real life and whatever news tidbits of the day that catch my eye. I try to keep things at The Last Page light, funny and some times a little edgy, depending on the kind of day I've had at work. I often write with my tongue placed firmly in cheek, so the occasional reader may not read a post the way I had intended it. This is to be expected. And if you're a blogger, you have to manage your own expectations.
Managing one's expectations is something I don't think enough bloggers do. I think something some bloggers don't realize is that just because you are a blogger that doesn't mean you're going to get linked. More important than that is the rarely acknowledged fact that most of us are just playing on the Internet. A few of the bloggers here and there will possibly be discovered for their nauseatingly precise commentary (yawn) on the Middle East, libertarian politics, or whatever else that puts me to sleep. But the vast majority of us are what we are: bloggers. We have a keyboard, an ISP, an opinion about damn near everything, and a desire to put it up on the Internet. Regardless of how powerful a medium the Internet is, every blogger needs to realize that it is, after all, just the Internet.
Posted by page at February 16, 2003 10:13 PM | TrackBack