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Rebecca at The Space Between My Peers asked me Why I Blog. In order to figure out how I started blogging you’d have to go back to a time in my life before kids when I had way too much time on my hands.
You see, we were watching different television shows on cable, and one that was interesting to us was 7th Heaven on TheWB. I don’t know why I got started, but I found their message boards and after a show on a particular topic I decided to see what the boards were saying. I waded into the discussion there, and that’s where my online experience began.
You see, I was very passionate, even from the beginning, on defending the Word of God and the morality behind it. Over time, I got into interesting interchanges that caused me to take on my pseudonym and it then occurred to me– I was talking about things that were better off shared. I was writing the same things over and over again for my defense to certain tactics. It was then that I decided that I had something to say on multiple topics and my bravejournal blog was born.
My first topic was one I was running across in multiple different places– the subject of gay rights. That year was an election year, and I found myself talking mostly about politics, what was going on in the country. For the most part, I found articles, linked to them and talked about them. When I found that links went missing, I started quoting pieces that were necessary.
I used my blog as an outlet for my thoughts on issues. I found some agreed, some disagreed. It wasn’t until April of 2006 that I decided that I would like my blog to become more than a hobby– that I should try to go somewhere else than bravejournal and see what it could become. My blog was getting more traffic than a friend’s site, so I moved it there for some time. It was nice to be off of bravejournal, but the site didn’t exactly say “MInTheGap.”
At that time a friend of mine told me about putting ads on my site, and although I originally bragged that I didn’t have ads, I found that it was a nice way to pay for the time that I was putting in. It was about that time that I started reading blogs like problogger.net and similar places that talked about how to get people to come to your blog. What good is speaking without someone to hear and comment?
It was about this time that my wife was in the first trimester of our latest child’s pregnancy, and so I had a lot of time on my hands. And all of a sudden, I was writing four posts a day, visiting other blogs, commenting, and was out and about.
Now, I’ve calmed down, become focused, written series and developed a conversation. Why do I blog? To reach out. To share my views. To encourage others.
What about you: Stephen, Mary, Meg, Doug, and Ann. Why do you blog?
I blog because I like to talk 🙂
But also as a deliberate strategy to generate links into my site. Why would I want that?
Well I made my first web site in January 1993. For a while it was the most popular Welsh site on the net, but was overtaken owing to lack of attention on my part. Lycos used to return my site on the first page of hits for “Wales”, Altavista dropped it to page 2, and Google now has me on… I have no idea where!
At the same time I teach people about subjects such as how the Google page ranking system works, and how to critically evaluate information on the web. To do this, I want to be able to find certain key words for which my site would be in the first google page of results for some keywords.
Blogging has helped me achieve this, because bloggers link to one another. So now, if I want to explain how those funny “weapons of mass destruction” searches work, I point them to my “my wombat is constipated” page. 🙂
Now that is the reason I started blogging. But I have always enjoyed discussing issues, and particularly issues of faith. I have written thousands of articles on Usenet news – so in that sense, blogging is just the new way of doing something I have been doing for a long time.
And my reason for discussing issues is because when people disagree with me, I have to think about that disagreement and challenge my views. I learn from debate, because I must respond to what people are saying.
So I have a “business” reason for blogging and a “personal” reason 🙂
So why does your wife being pregnant leave you with a lot of time on your hands?
😎
Hey, thanks for doing this. I look forward to reading the responses of the others (part of the reason I tagged you.)
Well, let’s just say that my wife needed more rest and wasn’t feeling well. :whistle:
Though I could possibly do 9:00 pm, she was going to bed near 8:00 pm, sometimes sooner. This left me with lots of time to write. :angel:
Okay, I get it.
Actually we have a little bit of that kind of thing going on here now (no I’m not pregnant, although that wouldn’t be a bad thing). No, it’s seasonal: I have allergies that make me really sleepy and he has Seasonal Affective Disorder. If he goes to bed when I do, he’s literally up at the crack of dawn! :sleeping:
I am so glad you shared about why you began blogging. I guess a lot of us just wanted to branch out and make new friends (all over the world) and talk about God, politics etc.
I happy that you are continuing to blog and I enjoy it immensely.
I believe I answered this question over at my place 🙂
Take a Peek if you want.
:ninja:
Blogging certainly is a way to get your views out.
Thank you, Leticia, for being with me for a very long time!
Stephen– you’re supposed to do it on your own blog– but I guess you could also do it in comments here.
Loved reading this, it brought back memories of my first ventures on the net and all the great friends I’ve made since beginning blogging…I’ll have a lot of fun with this, thanks for including me!
I identify with the pg sleepiness…though it usually hit me whenever I sat down, so by bedtime I was wired again. Weird how it hits so hard in the first trimester, but building little humans is hard work! I remember first visiting your blog in mid-2006 and every time I brought your page up there was new content! I thought of you as a mini-worldnetdaily…so many great topics, spurring on great dialogue. Keep it up! (Not the 4 posts a day though, I don’t want to miss any and have been having a hard time keeping up with my own blogging lately as it is!)
🙂
Anytime, MIn.
You know, I have been thinking about this for the last day… Why do I blog…. Very good question. I have no clue!
I don’t remember how I got started exactly, but I DO remember that I felt I had so very much to say. I felt so righteous. I felt like I needed to be a voice of truth… these days, I don’t feel like I have so much to say. I don’t feel like what I know is any more useful than what anyone else knows. I find that speaking to the anonymous “someones” out there, isn’t terribly motivating. I’d really rather have a nice cuppa’ with you and sit and talk about what is really important to you, your life what you are dealing with etc. Or share where the Lord is leading me or what I am struggling with, but in conversation. Maybe this is why I barely even blog anymore?!
Can’t think of anything to say that hasn’t been said. Perhaps I ought to start really just talking about me and what the Lord is showing me. I dunno.
Mrs. Meg Logan
LOL, if I ever figured out why I blogged… I might end up with a post more frequently then once every 6 months ;-). I tend to find it much more fun to respond to stuff like this and leave comments ;-).
Doug Logan