Jennifer Lynn over at Broke-Ass Student tagged me for the blog meme asking the question “why do I blog?”
Blogging has been a long, strange journey for me. Poorer Than You is not yet two months old – a baby compared to other blog, and especially compared to my writing history. I started writing at the tender age of six, when I started my own newspaper for kids, called the Kid’s Gazette (and I still go by the moniker kgazette to this day), which I was the Editor-and-Chief of for seven years, up until the tender age of 13. Yes, I had employees – staff writers who contributed articles for 10% of the issue’s profits. Yes, I had profits. It was my first business and my first foray into “writing for the masses.”
The next year, in the February of 2001, at the age of 14, I started my first blog. That means I’ve been blogging for six years, which makes me feel old, despite my youth. My first blog was actually fictional – I experimented with whether or not I could fool people with a fictional diary, which is something in the vein of LonelyGirl, although I certainly didn’t do it as well. After a few months, I tired of it, and began anew, with a diary that was actually mine. I bounced around for the next couple of years – writing in a blog for about a year, then moving to a different service and password protecting the old one.
In 2003 I started “Green Moths,” my ultimate diary blog. Started the summer before my junior year of high school, it extends into the present day. These days, I don’t write in it more often than every few months, and it’s been pushed into the “password protected” realm while I work on this one.
In this time, I also started a blog at LiveJournal, but I tend not to count that one, as I basically used it to post quiz results and random rants. I kinda hate LiveJournal, to be honest. I only got the account so that I could comment on my friend’s journals.
This little history lesson hasn’t really answered the question of “why” I blog. There must be a reason for me to continue an activity such as this for so long. A lot of it is simply the writer in me. When I was young, I wanted to be a writer when I “grew up.” As I discovered this wasn’t actually a profession in and of itself: you can be a journalist, or a novelist, or a screenwriter, but you can’t really be just a writer – or, at least, that’s what I was told.
As my profession of choice changed (ballerina, to teacher, to writer, to ?, to CSI, to filmmaker, to ?), I continued to always write, and always on my own terms. I always wanted to keep a diary, but I was always insanely slow at writing my hand, and lighting fast at the keyboard. When I discovered so-called “weblogs,” the idea just fit.
Nowadays, blogging isn’t about keeping a diary for me. Sure, all this nostalgia has me hankering for logging back into my diary and writing a post, and maybe I will, but when I discovered personal finance blogs, it was a case of “new interest meets old,” and the pieces fell into place.
In the end, I blog because my fingers will type whenever they get near a keyboard – a blog is just an excellent place to channel that activity, and get my brain involved in the action.
Finance Guy at Money and Sense, Gradgal at Grad Getting Out of Debt, and Living Almost Large, I tag YOU to answer the question… why do you blog?
I always wondered where you got the kgazette thing from! But now that you poored your soul onto the pulpit I won’t need to interogate you hehe!
Ok time for lunch! Have a good One Stephhhhhanator!!!!!
Juan
Thanks for the tag!
Here’s my reason:
http://startingyoung.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-do-i-blog.html
That’s too funny, Stephanie. I used to have my own magazine when I was seven years old, called “Paw Paw”. I would laminate my Paw Paw magazine and distribute it throughout my school. I had to eventually stop because classmates began asking for subscriptions and I couldn’t keep up with the production costs. My bf to this day teases me about my “Paw Paw” empire when I was younger.
I still love the look on people’s faces when they ask me what I do. I reply with a smile and sweetly say, “I’m a writer”.
Many of them don’t ‘get’ it.
Somehow, though, I believe you do π
Just a short story to share;
My ex boyfriend and I were sitting in Poulin Cafe in Montmartre, Paris three years ago (the cafe is where the film ‘Amelie’ was filmed, although we didn’t know it at the time since neither of us had seen ‘Amelie’ yet).
So we were enjoying a cup of hot cocoa at Poulin Cafe trying to warm ourselves, and I noticed a young woman sitting at the table next to us. Her head was completely down absorbed in her laptop and her fingers frantically tapped at the keys. I leaned over to my (now ex) and whispered, “See that woman there? I bet she’s a writer”. I rattled off a whole story surrounding her career as he amusingly listened.
About fifteen minutes later, I was surprised to suddenly here a voice say in English, “Excuse me, may I get by?” The woman had to squeeze past our table to leave. Once I realized she wasn’t Parisian, I introduced myself and asked where she was from. She was indeed a writer, from the United States no less! She had been staying in Paris for over a year now and was writing a book about the hippie movement in Montmartre.
I can still visualize that day so perfectly in my mind. It really is a wonderful memory. It reminds me how extremely proud I am to be a writer and have the ability to share my passion with others.
I apologize for the long-winded response. I thought perhaps you might enjoy that story as well.
=^..^=