I had a blog back in the year 2000. My college roommate was an enthusiastic early adopter of everything related to the Web. He got me hooked up with my own blog, and all of our friends got blogs, and we all blogged back and forth, commenting on each other’s blogs, sometimes without even needing to carry on actual conversations. It was great.
Then I graduated, started working full time, and fell away from the blogging life. Now it’s 9 years later, millions of people have blogs, some people make a good living from their blogs, and I feel like I’m late to the party.
So what am I trying to accomplish, by starting this blog now?
Here are some goals:
- Write more. I need to write every day. Blogging is a good way to discipline myself to do that. Even when I feel stuck or blocked, even when I don’t have any paid client work, I need to write to keep my writer senses sharp.
- Create writing samples. I want prospective clients to see how I write, see how my mind works, see my thought process.
- Do it for myself. Writing can be therapeutic, and it’s fun to look back at things I’ve written and see what I was thinking about “back then.”
- Show what a talented, thoughtful, funny person I am. (Seriously.) I want the people who read this, especially those who might hire me, to get a sense of who I am as a person.
- Keep in touch with family and friends. E-mail is just too hard sometimes – hard to find time to sit down and type it out, hard to pull together the mailing list, plus there’s always that sneaking suspicion that the e-mail will just wind up in everyone’s spam folder. Plus no one ever replies. E-mail is largely on its way to obsolescence – the spammers appear to be winning the war. So my family and friends can catch up with me here.
- Make new connections. Blogging is a great way to meet new people, make new friends, and find your “tribe” online. I’ve greatly enjoyed getting to know some of my favorite bloggers by reading their writing. It’s an intimate medium, and I hope to meet some great new people as a result of this effort.
That’s it for now. It feels good to be back as a blogger, and I’m going to do my best to keep it up.
