In The Bloginning 2 – What Got Me Started?

I’d love to say that I was suddenly overcome by a fervent feeling to shout my story from the rooftops,and a blog was the only way to do it, but no. Nothing as exciting as that. I wasn’t even sure that I had a “story.” How I got started was as roundabout a reason as any.

After much persuasion, roughly a year ago today in fact, I accepted the invitation to be a team blogger on a blog called Purple Women (a blog about Childfree living) which was just getting underway. At that point I had absolutely no intention of starting my own blog, it was probably the furthest thing from my mind. I was too busy for one thing. And I thought “blogging (as in having my own blog) ain’t for me.”

But one day I was doing some research for, of all things, types of blog side bar to make some suggestions for improving the PW blog navigation. My searching and surfing meant I looked at lots of blogs as examples. As I did so I began to realize that a blog might be a good idea for storing the more than 1,000 digital photos that my husband and I had languishing on our computers. I could store them on a blog and write about them, I thought, and perhaps someone might be interested in viewing them. Hello, MSN Spaces. Sad, brief, but true.

When I found shortly afterwards, that even inviting friends to view my photos meant they had to have an MSN login it was “G’bye MSN Spaces.” By that time, though, my interest in blogging had taken hold. I wanted to blog about my travels and photos. I began to take a little more interest in this blogging thing. I still wasn’t particularly interested in blogging about myself. Who cared what I had for breakfast this morning? No, it had to be something more… but what? I wasn’t sure, but I started looking at different blogs, researched blogging platforms, found Wordpress. org and then Wordpress.com and set up my blog – thinking that if I did it for a week and got bored with it, I could easily duck out. No-one was likely to visit anyway. Or so I thought.

In the meantime, I continued doing my contributing duties. Then one day I got an idea for an article – in fact a series of articles. I called it Reactions To The Childfree Choice, simply, it was 20 articles on the typical comments and attitudes childfree people encountered when they said they were childfree. All articles are accessible under my Childfree category and via my Archives. The interesting thing was, I drafted the entire series that very day. All 20 of them. Looking back I can hardly believe it myself. My thoughts were coming faster than I was able to write, but I didn’t stop until I’d got the first drafts down.

I thought that these would be as good a place as any to start posting on Like It Is, and that’s what I did. As I wrote I was writing for myself, expanding my ideas, sharing what I thought and examining and expanding my thoughts on things I already knew, some I didn’t even realise that I knew and, once I started receiving comments, those sparked even more ideas. I did post on other things as well, but being childfree was something I knew well, so my perspective was more personal

Something else happened that really made Like It Is take off. I got unceremoniously booted off a team blog as a contributor. If you want to read about that, you can do so here. I was actually in two minds whether to mention it, but since it was pivotal (and the post is in publicly in my blog anyway) I thought I need to mention it. But I should also add that Teri and I have since reconciled and I’ve moved on. The day it happened though, I was so very glad I had a blog. Because I blogged about it, right down to how I felt and that felt good. I also got unexpected support from my new found blogging friends.

I have often thought that, had I continued trying to meet my team contributor commitments, as well as work on my own blog, Like It Is may not have got off the ground in the way it did. As any blogger will know, creating good posts takes time and energy. As it happened getting my marching orders turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I cut all my links to PW and with the weight of blogging for someone else suddenly lifted, I could commit fully to building Like It Is. A door had closed, but one had most certainly opened if I wanted to seize the opportunity. Hundreds of posts and comments later – well, what do you think?.

I would like to think we both learnt a lot from the episode. I certainly did and one of the decisions I made was that I wouldn’t do the team blog thing again.

But… I was now free to create my stuff entirely on my own terms! This was MY blog, and I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I was euphoric. Hello World! Britgirl had arrived!

My “Childfree…” series, which I posted once a week got several comments and quite a few links considering my blog had only been up for a couple of months at that time. Helped a lot, I must say by being part of the WP community and WP forum (the one of the thing I do miss slightly having moved) … What it showed me was that I could take a thought or an idea share it and people found something useful in what I had to say. I enjoyed the writing and the dialogue and I my readers comments were fascinating. It was hard to believe I said I’d never have a blog. For months I would say to my husband… “but I said I’d never have a blog…now look at me” Now I can’t imagine not blogging… seeing that I’m never short of something to say…”

And the photos? Well, I discovered Flickr of course…uploaded them all up there and the rest as they say, is history!

Your turn… what got you started as blogger ?What influenced you, if anything? If you’re a blog reader what made you start reading blogs?

Next: Why Do I blog? (Your chance to really let rip).

Tagged as: Blogging, blogs, childfree-series, digital-photos, purple-women, wordpress