I first joined Blogger because the Internet used to be new and exciting. It can still be exciting, no doubt, but it’s grown up a bit, as have I. Back when I was in high school I joined every social media website I heard about, with the aim of having multiple profiles all over the web and being, therefore, cool.
I didn’t succeed in being cool. The only thing I actually achieved was having multiple profiles all over the place with childish usernames, awful grammar, and personal information that was best left unpublished. Oh, the follies of youth!
I’ve since spent many hours trying to access old email accounts in an effort to get these profiles taken down and, in many cases I’ve been successful, but not in all.
Anyway, back to blogging. When I first joined Blogger I didn’t know what a blog was, and I didn’t care. I just wanted a profile. So I made one, and then swiftly moved on.
Time passed and Facebook was born. I went to University and started writing Facebook “notes” to kind of document the experience. That was 2008, and in 2009 I rediscovered my actual blog, and started cross posting. I got feedback, telling me what I wrote was interesting (though, looking back, I quite disagree), and so I blogged more. I spent more time writing blog posts than actual university work and then, at the start of 2010, when I’d decided to drop out of university I had even more time to write. I went from one blog to three, separating out the mish-mash of everything that had been my main blog (aptly titled This and That) to a Creative Writing Blog (Writing Through the Night), and a place for posts about Christianity (what came to be known as my “God Blog”).
Time marched on again, and I found that keeping up three blogs was not as much fun as keeping one, so I did the logical thing and made a forth – for Bible Study and Sermon Notes – only to abandon it not long after.
Posts on all of my blogs became less frequent, as I spent more time writing fiction, and then I decided to take the crazy step of becoming a writer full time. I’m not sure it seemed so crazy at the time, but it’s what I did nonetheless. That was 2012, and I have looked back, I won’t lie. I wonder if it was the right thing; if I was ready, or if I knew what I was doing, but I am content enough with where I am now, so I guess it worked out.
As I’m assuming you know, at the end of 2014 I decided to ditch having four blogs and go back down to two. My main blog and my creative writing blog were merged and moved here, and my God Blog and blog for Bible Study and Sermon Notes were merged and moved to WordPress. It’s been quite a journey, as you can see, but you may be wondering how it’s been eight years, if I started in 2008. Well, I thought I started in 2008, but recently I Googled an old username and discovered (much to my horror) that I had a blog before that – in, you’ve guessed it – February 2007. So, it’s been almost exactly eight years, and I feel like I’ve learnt a lot. The main thing being that I shouldn’t put half as much stuff on the Internet. In light of that, I’ve decided not to edit and archive my old posts here. Do me a favor and pretend I never promised to do otherwise, yeah?
