KirstenL4W

Blog. I haz one. I’ve been blogging for over 2 years now, and even after all this time, I still quite enjoy it.

I started blogging once someone I knew had one. I’d heard of blogs, and some of my imaginary internet friends had them. but I just didn’t get how fun it could be until my high school friend Courtney got pregnant and used the blog to document her pregnancy and communicate with everyone about it. Actually, Court’s blog had two results - my blog, and more importantly, it allowed us to catch up with each other, since we had drifted apart after college. Double Bonus!

Anyway, I was doing my research and checking out exactly what this blog stuff was all about, and one day, when bored at work, I finally decided to go for it. My goal at the time was to journal my thoughts, much in the same way I did in my handwritten journal. I was curious to see if my thoughts attracted any readers from the great wide interwebs, and indeed they had. But my thrill was short lived. My first comment was a scathing attack by someone who refused to reveal themselves to me. Yep, an anonymous comment that was not nice at all. Even though I deleted the comment, I replied in this post. I figured that while the comment was a nasty attack, there were some points that needed clearing up, for the benefit of future readers. Eventually, I got more and more readers, and even made my first blogging friend. That’s it, I was hooked.

I started spending more and more time on my blog, learning my way around the template, html and css. I spent hours looking for resources to improve my blog and make it a place that I wanted to be, much in the same way one does to their home. I found widgets and other cool things to install, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I started thinking about everything that happened to me as a blog post, and posted about my innermost thoughts as well as the mundane happenings of my everyday life.

Over time, the novelty wore off. I started to regain some of the balance with my offline life, and even made a bunch of new friends here. That group of people eventually led me to meet FH, and now my life is so fulfilling that I sometimes have a hard time keeping up with the blog. Maybe I started blogging to fill a hole in my life, and it certainly did that for a time. But now, the blog is such a part of my life that I don’t know what I’d do to chill out, de-stress, escape for a bit if I didn’t have my blog and the blogosphere to keep me sane.

The blog has seen some changes since I first started. Template changes are always popular with new bloggers, and I sure had a few of those. Then I started getting into the css and did what I could to make it my own. Macoosh made me a beautiful header, and I got to a place where I was happy with the template. But there was always this voice at the back of my head, nagging me to see what I could do better. I knew I wanted more from my blog, more functionality, and more options. A big change was in order, and a few months ago, with Snoskred’s help, I switched to a self-hosted WordPress blog. I still have lots to learn about the new platform, and there’s this whole new language called php that I need to learn. I don’t have the time to devote to things that I did when I was single, but I’m managing. I started with one template, and soon found another that I like a lot better. I still look at the template to see what I can do, but I’m largely satisfied with it. But I have a favorite feature here that I couldn’t have at Blogger…

Pages! Lots and lots of pages! WP lets the blog be like a real website, with different pages for different subjects. Holy freaking cow! The possibilities are endless. I was able to take some things off my front page to keep that cleaner, dedicate a page to a mini-niche, and improve functionality with a sitemap and contact page. I feel like I hit the jackpot here. There’s even more that I want to do - I’m working on a Shopping page using my Amazon.com affiliate account, to keep all my favorite stuff that I recommend to all of you in one place. That probably won’t go live until after we move, but again, the possibility is exciting.

Of course, I’m not looking to make millions from my blog. Tens would be nice, just enough to pay my extremely reasonable hosting fees and perhaps buy a CD or DVD every now and then. This isn’t going to morph into a pro blog where I ramble incessantly about some subject I claim to be an authority in. No, this is a personal blog, first and foremost, and I will ramble on about me, a subject I am an authority in. I’ll continue to blog as a hobby, as an outlet, and as a way of networking and “meeting” new people (btw, Alyndabear, buffet in August, right? And Macoosh - Columbus Day in Boston?) This may be a coincidence, or not, but my personal satisfaction in my everyday life has increased tenfold since I started blogging. As far as I’m concerned, blogging is here to stay.

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