Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers. – Brian Clark, www.copyblogger.com
After writing on the internet for more than three years now (had to check my archives to be sure), I am still hesitant to call my website a weblog. I shy away from being called a blogger. As a former journalist, I don’t find it very professional to be called a blogger. I don’t even know where the word “blog” came from. I don’t call my posts “posts”, I call them “articles”.
I started writing on the internet with my previous social network, used blogger and immediately moved to wordpress as soon as I realized the benefits of it. I decided on maintaining a blog when I moved to the Netherlands and started writing really long letters to family and friends, updating them about my life here. Sometimes I would write many different letters just to update them, because of course, a letter to my mom would be differently addressed compared to a letter to a friend. I was also sending many pictures as attachments to letters and sometimes, that does not work smoothly or a lot of work. So I decided to share my changing life on the internet.
With a website, I thought, I can post all the pictures that I want and write whatever I want, even if it is not related to moving to the Netherlands. I admired people who can provide content to their blogs everyday. I admired them more if they were able to provide dynamic content everyday. Ideas keep me awake at night. Writing provides the channel to purge those ideas. Family and friends will read my articles if they are interested enough. Perfect arrangement.
However, I was not able to write everyday. Maybe because part of me is hesitant to open my life to the internet. I don’t want to be just another digital journal. This is my 201st article but there are 200 more in my draft folder. There are still many events waiting to be written about, many ideas waiting to be fought for.
To rekindle my love for writing and my passion in sharing my ideas to the universe (yes, that’s my word for the year, “share”), I recently subscribed to the most popular blogs in the blogging community which are: Copyblogger, ProBlogger, Daily Blog Tips, The Blog Herald and Lorelle on WordPress.
I was sure I will learn a thing or two from these and I was not wrong. Reading the article of Jon Morrow in Copyblogger titled, “On Dying, Mothers and Fighting for Your Ideas”, I was reminded why I started to write for the internet anyway or blog. That is, to share my ideas, to fight for my ideas, to breathe life in them.
And so I will continue to write. To blog. To learn about how to promote my ideas in cyberspace as I read new content in my RSS reader. Everyday. And maybe it will help if I admit that yes, I am a blogger. #
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